CNBC commentator Rick Santelli appears on two conservative radio programs, hosted by G. Gordon Liddy and Mike Gallagher respectively, to promote his “tea party” “rant” against the White House’s economic bailouts (see February 19, 2009). He tells both Liddy and Gallagher that he felt “threatened” by the White House’s response to his remarks (see February 20, 2009). Santelli tells Liddy that White House press secretary Robert Gibbs “started that press conference saying, ‘I don’t know where he lives, I don’t know where his house is.’ This is the press secretary of the White House. Is that the kind of thing we want?” Liddy calls Gibbs’s remark “a veiled threat.” Santelli replies: “It really is.… I don’t really want to be a spokesman, but I really am very proud of a) the response I’m getting, which is overwhelmingly positive, and b) discourse, that is debate. That if the pressure and the heat I’m taking from the White House—the fact my kids are nervous to go to school—I can take that, okay.” Santelli tells Gallagher he finds it “very scary” for Gibbs to say “we don’t know where he lives or where his house is.” Progressive news Web site Think Progress publishes Gibbs’s full quote from the February 21 press conference, which it says proves Gibbs made no such threats towards Santelli. Gibbs said: “I’ve watched Mr. Santelli on cable the past 24 hours or so. I’m not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives or in what house he lives but the American people are struggling every day to meet their mortgages, stay in their jobs, pay their bills, send their kids to school.” Think Progress’s Lee Fang writes, “Gibbs wasn’t threatening Santelli; he was pointing out the sheer absurdity of a well-to-do pundit criticizing Obama’s housing plan as seeking to simply [quoting Santelli] ‘subsidize the losers’ mortgages.’” [Think Progress, 2/23/2009]

Cover of Grabe and Bucy’s ‘Image Bite Politics.’ [Source: University of Indiana]An Indiana University study shows that the three American broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, systematically favored Republicans in their election news coverage from 1992 through 2004. The study is presented by two professors in the Department of Telecommunications, Maria Elizabeth Grabe and Erik Bucy, and is published in book form, entitled Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections. The Indiana University press release notes, “Their research runs counter to the popular conventional notion of a liberal bias in the media in favor of Democrats and against Republican candidates.” Grabe says: “We don’t think this is journalists conspiring to favor Republicans. We think they’re just so beat up and tired of being accused of a liberal bias that they unknowingly give Republicans the benefit in coverage. It’s self-censorship that journalists might be imposing on themselves.” Focusing on 'Image Bites' - Grabe and Bucy focused on visual coverage of presidential candidates. Between 1992 and 2004, they found, candidates were shown more visually over the years, in what the authors call “image bites,” while their verbal statements, or “sound bites,” steadily decreased in average length. Grabe and Bucy examined 62 hours of broadcast news coverage, totaling 178 newscasts, between Labor Day and Election Day over four US presidential elections between 1992 and 2004. Cable news outlets such as CNN and Fox News were not included in the study. The professors are now examining broadcast coverage for the 2008 election. Favoritism in Visual Coverage - According to the press release: “Grabe and Bucy found the volume of news coverage focusing exclusively on each party—one measure of media bias—favored Republicans. Their research found there were more single-party stories about Republicans overall and in each election year except 1992. When they studied the time duration of these stories, no pattern of favoritism was evident. But they did spot differences when they studied visual coverage, that is, with the volume turned down.” Grabe and Bucy note: “Reporters do exercise control over production decisions. The internal structure of news stories—their placement in the newscast, editing techniques and manipulations related to camera angles, shot lengths, eyewitness perspectives and zoom movements—is at the volition of news workers, free of the influence of image handlers.” Editing Techniques Favor Republicans - The authors examined several “visual packaging techniques” used in editing a film of a candidate. Two techniques worthy of note were the “lip-flap shot,” in which a reporter narrates over a video of the candidate talking, and the “Goldilocks effect,” wherein a candidate gets the last word in a piece and thus is better remembered by viewers. The “lip-flap shot” is considered so negative for a candidate that it is considered a “violation of professional television news production standards,” according to the authors. Both techniques were employed to the benefit of Republicans, the authors report. Democrats were more apt to be subjected to “lip-flapping,” while Republicans more often got the last word in (except in 2004, when the “Goldilocks effect” was relatively even-handed). Other techniques that are considered detrimental to candidates are extreme close-ups, with a face filling the screen, and long-distance shots. In general, both techniques were used to affect Democrats more often than Republicans. And Republicans garnered more favorable views with such techniques as low-angle camera shots, which the authors say demonstrably “attribute power and dominance to candidates in experimental studies.” Most professional cameramen and journalists are trained not to use low-angle or high-angle shots, says Grabe, and instead to favor more neutral eye-level shots. She notes: “It takes the same amount of time to rig a camera for a low-angle shot as for a more neutral eye-level shot. It doesn’t take any extra effort to be professionally unbiased. There is evidence that the pattern favoring Republicans is stable across networks, because there are no statistically significant differences between them.” Impact on Poll Numbers - The impact of these negative and positive “packaging” techniques on daily polls was measurable, Grabe says: “When negative packaging over time spiked for a candidate, public opinion generally went down. You can observe the same inverse trend. When detrimental packaging subsides, public opinion is at its highest point. In experimental research, these production features have been shown to have an impact—now we have indications that they have broad impact on public opinion.” Conclusion - Bucy concludes: “Visuals are underappreciated in news coverage. You can have a negative report. You can have the journalist being opinionated against the candidate. But if you’re showing favorable visuals, that outweighs the net effect on the viewer almost every single time.” [University of Indiana, 2/24/2009]

The photo Mayor Grose sent out to, among others, an African-American community member. [Source: Keyanus Price]The mayor of Los Alamitos, a small city in Orange County, California, causes an uproar when he sends a “joke” e-mail that shows the White House with a watermelon patch taking the place of the usual White House garden. The e-mail is entitled “No Easter Egg hunt this year.” Among the recipients are the members of the City Council, and black businesswoman and community volunteer Keyanus Price. Price explains, “I think he’s saying that since there’s a black president, there will be no need to hunt for eggs since they’re growing watermelons in the front yard this year.” Price replies to the e-mail, sent by Mayor Dean Grose, with the response: “Hey, that’s not nice at all. Not all black people like watermelon… you should know better than that.” Grose’s initial reply fails to respond to the racial content, and reads: “The way things are today, you gotta laugh every now and then. I wanna see the coloring contests.” Price says Grose’s response upset her even more than the original e-mail. “As soon as I saw his response; that put me over the top because it was no big deal to him,” she says. “I was horrified when I read that e-mail. What I’m concerned about is how can this person send an e-mail out like this and think it is OK?” When Orange County residents and city leaders begin protesting the racially insensitive e-mail, Grose issues an apology to Price, her boss, and the City Council; it reads in part: “I am deeply embarrassed in receiving your e-mail, and for any harm or hurt that it may have caused. It was poor judgment on my part and was never intended to be offensive to Ms. Price, your company or anyone in the African-American community.… I in no way was representing the City of Los Alamitos, or my role as a council member in sending this out and it went via my private business e-mail. That doesn’t justify the fact that it was sent, however, we gratefully appreciate the contributions that your company makes to our community and I wish to publically apologize to anyone within the firm or organization that may have been offended. I am truly sorry.” Some residents are not mollified. “It appalls me how much racial insensitivity continues in this day and age,” says Aliso Viejo resident Brian Alpers. “Even forwarding e-mails like that continue to perpetuate stereotypes and yes, even racial hatred.” 74-year old Marjorie McDowall says: “It reminds me of my childhood and all the filthy jokes there were about blacks. It’s really offensive. I thought we were beyond that. I really did.” Robert Graham adds: “To me, it’s not so much the e-mail that was sent but the comment that was sent afterward that supports it. For me, as a resident and he being my mayor, it reflects on the rest of our community. He’s our representative not only to the county, but the state as well.” An unidentified person smashes a watermelon in front of Grose’s office, apparently either in protest or retaliation for the e-mail. Two days after sending the e-mail, Grose announces that he will resign as mayor of Los Alamitos. “The attention brought to this matter has sadly created an image of me which is most unfortunate,” he writes. “I recognize that I’ve made a mistake and have taken steps to make sure this is never repeated.” [Orange County Register, 2/24/2009; Orange County Register, 2/24/2009; Orange County Register, 2/26/2009; Orange County Register, 2/26/2009]

Dave Schultheis. [Source: NowPublic (.com)]Colorado Republican State Senator Dave Schultheis votes against a bill requiring pregnant women to be tested for HIV so their unborn children can be treated to prevent the virus’s transfer. Instead, Schultheis says the babies should be allowed to have HIV so as to punish the mother’s actions. “This [HIV] stems from sexual promiscuity for the most part, and I just can’t go there,” he says. “We do things continually to remove the consequences of poor behavior, unacceptable behavior, quite frankly. I’m not convinced that part of the role of government should be to protect individuals from the negative consequences of their actions.” Lois Tochtrop, a Democratic Senator who co-sponsored the bill, replies: “HIV does not just come from sexual promiscuity. It comes from many other things, contaminated blood for one.” Fellow Democrat Jennifer Veiga calls Schultheis’s comments “shameful.” Minority Leader Josh Penry, the leader of the Senate Republicans, says he has no intention of muzzling the members of his caucus, though he says he has reminded his colleagues “we should never lose sight of the humanity of people on the other side of an issue.” Penry accuses Senate Democrats of attempting to “gin up the outrage machine,” and says Democrats have made their share of questionable comments. The bill in question has the support of every Senate Republican except Schultheis; Penry is a co-sponsor. Schultheis’s is the only “no” vote. House member Marsha Looper is one of the few Republicans to question Schultheis’s comments, and the Senate Republican leadership’s failure to publicly criticize his remarks. “What are they doing over there?” she asks. “I find their comments inappropriate and offensive, and I question their motives.” Former Governor Bill Owens, a Republican, says he cannot understand Schultheis’s vote: “It’s extremely inconsistent for any person who is pro-life to oppose this effort to potentially save the life of a child.” For his part, Schultheis answers Democratic criticism by making further comments which many find even more offensive. “What I’m hoping is that yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that,’ he says. “The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity and it may make a number of people over the coming years… begin to realize that there are negative consequences and maybe they should adjust their behavior. We can’t keep people from being raped. We can’t keep people from shooting each other. We can’t keep people from jumping off bridges. People drink and drive, and they crash and kill people. Poor behavior has its consequences.” [Rocky Mountain News, 2/25/2009; Denver Post, 2/26/2009]

Dale Robertson, the leader of TeaParty.org, displays a handmade sign with a racial slur. Mediaite, the source of this photo, later blocked out a portion of the offending word. Robertson’s sign itself is not blocked out. [Source: Mediaite]Tea party activist Dale Robertson, who leads TeaParty.org, displays a sign at a “Liberty Concert” tea party rally in Houston that many critics will condemn for being openly racist. The sign reads, “Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = N_ggar.” Josh Parker of the Houston Tea Party Society later claims that Robertson is asked to leave the event because of the sign. Robertson, one of the organizers of the event, told tea party activists via ResistNet that the rally is the first of a series of events “designed to be the key to create a model for our Nation to Take Back America. The Tea Party does not intend to waste their time simply rallying. The Plan is to optimize the events, they will be fun and Citizens will be asked to run for office, with the focus of Restoring America, and thus, putting it on the Conservative track.” According to Robertson’s email, he and his organization intend to run thousands of tea party-affiliated candidates in the 2010 elections, either as third-party candidates or as Republicans. In 2010, Mediaite reporter Tommy Christopher will observe: “I happen to be friends with a lot of conservatives, including many involved in the tea party movement, and while I disagree with them, I don’t think for a second that Robertson speaks for them, or for most tea partiers. The problem is that, after over a year of protests, the movement has still not succeeded in expelling this element.” [Washington Independent, 1/4/2010; Mediaite, 3/26/2010] Robertson later claims the photograph of the sign was doctored, and will say that the sign actually read, “Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = Slave.” Mediaite Photoshop expert Philip Bump will say that there is no evidence showing that the photograph was tampered with or altered. Robertson will promise to provide a picture of the “actual” sign, but will fail to do so. He will blame high-ranking members of the Republican Party for attempting to besmirch his character and reputation. [Mediaite, 3/31/2010]

Mark Ames. [Source: Guardian]CNBC’s Rick Santelli has become something of a superstar among conservative media pundits and others exasperated by the Obama economic bailouts, after engaging in a purportedly impromptu “rant” during an on-air broadcast (see February 19, 2009). Investigative reporters Mark Ames and Yasha Levine discover that Santelli’s rant may have been a pre-planned incident timed to coincide with the launch of a so-called “tea party movement” predicated on opposing the Obama administration and supporting conservative and Republican ideas and agendas. In the hours and days following Santelli’s appearance on CNBC, the authors write, “[a] nationwide ‘tea party’ grassroots Internet protest movement has sprung up seemingly spontaneously, all inspired by Santelli, with rallies planned today in cities from coast to coast to protest against Obama’s economic policies.” Connections to the Koch Family - Ames and Levine write that Santelli’s CNBC “rant” was “a carefully-planned trigger for the anti-Obama campaign. In PR terms, his February 19th call for a ‘Chicago Tea Party’ was the launch event of a carefully organized and sophisticated PR campaign, one in which Santelli served as a frontman, using the CNBC airwaves for publicity, for the some of the craziest and sleaziest right-wing oligarch clans this country has ever produced.” Ames and Levine are referring to the Koch family, headed by Fred Koch (see 1940 and After), the billionaire co-founder of the extremist John Birch Society (see March 10, 1961 and December 2011) and whose sons are heavy donors to right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups such as the Cato Institute (see 1977-Present) and FreedomWorks (see 1984 and After). ChicagoTeaParty.com - On the air, Santelli said, “We’re thinking of having a Chicago tea party in July, all you capitalists who want to come down to Lake Michigan, I’m gonna start organizing.” Within minutes, Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report had posted headlines about the “tea party” rant on his Web site. Within hours, a new Web site, chicagoteaparty.com, had appeared, featuring a YouTube video of Santelli’s rant and calling itself the official home of the Chicago Tea Party. The domain name had been registered months before by right-wing media figure Zack Christenson (see August 2008), but had remained dormant until after Santelli spoke on CNBC. Ames and Levine note that Christenson bought the domain around the same time that Milt Rosenburg, the Chicago talk show host whom Christenson produces, began attempting to link then-presidential candidate Barack Obama with “left-wing terrorist” William Ayers (see August 2008). Ames and Levine write: “That Rosenberg’s producer owns the ‘chicagoteaparty.com’ site is already weird—but what’s even stranger is that he first bought the domain last August, right around the time of Rosenburg’s launch of the ‘Obama is a terrorist’ campaign. It’s as if they held this ‘Chicago tea party’ campaign in reserve, like a sleeper-site. Which is exactly what it was.” The Sam Adams Alliance - The ChicagoTeaParty.com Web site, Ames and Levine report, is part of a larger network of conservative Web sites set up over the last few months under the auspices of the “Sam Adams Alliance” (SAA), an organization linked to the Koch family and to FreedomWorks, a public relations group funded by Koch and headed by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey (see April 14, 2009). The SAA is a Chicago-area libertarian/conservative group named for Samuel Adams, who led the Boston Tea Party protest in 1773. [Playboy, 2/27/2009] In 2008, the New York Times described the SAA as having “started an ambitious project this year to encourage right-leaning activists and bloggers to get online and focus on local and state issues.” [New York Times, 7/19/2008]OfficialChicagoTeaParty.com - Another Web site, officialchicagoteaparty.com, went live on February 19 as well. That site is registered to Eric Odom, a Republican specializing in faux-grassroots PR campaigns sometimes called “astroturf” (see April 15, 2009). Odom has worked with Koch Industries, a large oil and natural gas corporation and the source of the Koch family fortune, in supporting offshore oil-drilling legislation. Odom was, until January 2009, the “new media coordinator” for the Sam Adams Alliance. Upon his departure, the SAA removed Odom’s name from its Web site. The SAA also removed any mention of Koch’s funding, or any other connections between Koch and the organization, from its site. Two of the SAA’s board members, Eric O’Keefe and Joseph Lehman, are tied both to Koch and to FreedomWorks. FreedomWorks - In the hours after Santelli’s rant, FreedomWorks posted a large photo of Santelli on its Web site’s front page with the caption: “Are you with Rick? We are. Click here to learn more.” Other Sites - In the hours after Santelli’s rant, other Web sites such as Right.org, promoting a tea party support group that purports to be a citizen-launched organization “created by a few friends who were outraged by the bailouts” and headed by “Evan and Duncan,” and numerous pro-tea party Facebook pages, were launched. Right.org is sponsoring a $27,000 prize for an “anti-bailout video competition.” Ames and Levine ask: “Who are Evan and Duncan? Do they even really exist?” No Connections on the Surface - Ames and Levine note that the numerous Web sites and Facebook pages have remarkable similarities in language and appearance, “as if they were part of a multi-pronged advertising campaign planned out by a professional PR company. Yet, on the surface, they pretended to have no connection. The various sites set up their own Twitter feeds and Facebook pages dedicated to the Chicago Tea Party movement. And all of them linked to one another, using it as evidence that a decentralized, viral movement was already afoot. It wasn’t about partisanship; it was about real emotions coming straight from real people.” Santelli and the Tea Party Organizers - Ames and Levine ask why Santelli, and CNBC, would “risk their credibility, such as it is, as journalists dispensing financial information in order to act as PR fronts for a partisan campaign.” Santelli’s contract with CNBC is about to expire, they note. Until the “tea party” rant, Santelli was an obscure financial commentator with few prospects. Now, though, he is a “hero” of the right. As another Chicago tea party organization, the Daily Bail, wrote on its site: “Rick, this message is to you. You are a true American hero and there are no words to describe what you did today except your own. Headquartered nearby, we will be helping the organization in whatever way possible.” Ames and Levine speculate that Santelli may have been brought into the fold by one of his CNBC colleagues, Lawrence Kudlow, who himself has strong connections to FreedomWorks. [Playboy, 2/27/2009] Steve Megremis of the Daily Bail will call Ames and Levine’s allegations about his Web site’s involvement “categorically untrue,” writing: “It’s unfortunate because I believe that the article did some great investigative work and then at the end they threw me under the bus for no apparent reason. Apparently, the authors just assumed we were part of this conspiracy because of my own personal excitement about the prospect of a mid-summer tea party.” Megremis will post a response on his site, but the response will soon disappear. [Barry Ritholtz, 2/28/2009]Playboy Removes Article - By March 2, Playboy will remove the Ames and Levine article from its Web site. No explanation is offered. The article will instead become available on a Web site called “The Exiled,” which bills itself as an “alternative” press outlet. [Jeffrey Feldman, 3/2/2009]

Two of the signs being carried by ‘tea party’ protesters at the Santa Monica event. [Source: GayPatriot (.net)]Yasha Levine, co-author of a Playboy article alleging that the Rick Santelli “tea party” “rant” on CNBC was part of a pre-planned rollout of corporate-funded tea party organizations (see February 27, 2009), attends a tea party event at the Santa Monica pier. The event, planned as a “spontaneous” citizen protest of the Obama administration’s economic policies, was planned and supervised by Tony Katz, who organized it through a Facebook page. The event is planned to last 45 minutes, and consists of a quick “meet and greet,” three keynote speakers (an actor, a writer, and a comedian), and as a finale, a quick teabagging ceremony. Levine says the event’s timing is not conducive to attracting large numbers of protesters, being as it takes place at the beginning of a workday. However, she notes, it is quite conducive for media coverage: journalists would “get the material and be back in the office before noon, enough time to write and edit their segments to appear that same day.” Levine arrives late, but in time to witness Katz finishing his closing speech and event organizers passing out tea bags. She estimates the crowd size at about 50, “not what you would expect from a grassroots movement that supposedly tsunamied so fast that a whole network materialized in just a few days” (see February 19-21, 2009). Some protesters hold anti-Obama signs, others wave signs with anti-tax slogans. At least a third of the crowd, Levine writes, is made up of reporters and other “media types.” At 9:35, Katz exhorts the crowd to throw their tea bags into a pot of water (as throwing them in the ocean constitutes littering) and scream out their anti-tax demands. Levine observes: “It was a total sham, a front in order to get TV facetime. It worked, too. Fox News sent a camera crew. So did NBC. Koch [the Koch family, whom Levine has accused of clandestinely funding many tea party organizations] was teabagging the media, and the media loved it.” [Yasha Levine, 2/27/2009]

The Weekly Standard, in a column by Jonathan Last, promotes and celebrates the nascent “tea party” movement that started as a reaction to an on-air “rant” by CNBC commentator Rick Santelli (see February 19, 2009 and February 27, 2009) against the government bailouts of large corporations. (The article is dated March 9, but is posted on the Standard’s Web site on March 2.) Last notes that previous organizations opposing the bailouts had been proven to be “astroturf” groups pretending to be grassroots, citizen-driven organizations, but in fact owned and operated by such conservative public relations firms as FreedomWorks (see April 14, 2009). Now, however, Last says the “tea party” organizations springing up around the country are actual grassroots organizations with no affiliations to conservative PR firms or political organizations. Last notes that conservative radio producer Zack Christenson had indeed bought chicagoteaparty.com in August 2008 (see August 2008), as noted by progressive reporters who have alleged that the “tea party” movement—and Santelli’s “spontaneous” rant (see March 2, 2009)—were part of a pre-planned launch effort (see February 27, 2009), but claims that Christenson merely bought the domain “thinking it might be a good name for a group,” and “retooled the site” hours after seeing Santelli’s rant. Last claims that dozens of other sites, including reteaparty.com (see March 2, 2009), were bought and posted “spontaneously” within hours of Santelli’s broadcast, as were dozens of Facebook “tea party” and Santelli fan sites. Last claims that reteaparty.com owner Anthony Astolfi, with the help of “his roommate and a cousin,” bought the domain, designed and posted the site, and promoted it on dozens of “high-ranking results pages” within 12 hours of Santelli’s rant, and awoke the next day to find they had had 40,000 visitors to their site and become “a minor sensation.” Last concludes by writing: “[I]t’s easy to see the groups that might make up a real grassroots movement: the Ron Paul libertarians, renters, housing bubble obsessives, disillusioned Democrats, stat-head financial types, and, of course, rich, heartless Republicans. And then there is Santelli, who, if so inclined, might put himself forward the way Howard Jarvis did with his property tax revolt in California in 1978. The question is whether or not these people can find each other and figure out a way to push back.” [Weekly Standard, 3/9/2009] Investigative reporters Mark Ames and Yasha Levine note that Astolfi’s Web site is indeed funded by a conservative political action committee (PAC), a fact that Last either does not know or chooses not to report. [Mark Ames and Yasha Levine, 3/2/2009]

CNBC financial commentator Rick Santelli, who caused a media sensation with his anti-bailout “rant” in mid-February (see February 19, 2009), and whose commentary has been alleged to have been part of a larger “tea party” rollout by several well-funded conservative organizations (see February 27, 2009), pens a disclaimer for the CNBC Web site. He writes that he has “NO affiliation or association with any of the Web sites or related tea party movements that have popped up as a result of my comments on February 19th, or to the best of my knowledge any of the people who organized the Web sites or movements.” He describes his on-air style as “aggressive and impassioned,” and says his February 19 rant was neither staged nor deliberate. “It was unique in that it obviously struck a chord with the public, thus inciting what can only be described as a groundswell of feedback from the public, the White House (see February 20, 2009), the Internet, and the media at large (see February 19-21, 2009). The president’s plan addressing issues in the housing market was the topic; but only the tip of the iceberg in fact. The real nerve struck seems to be the pent up emotions felt by millions of Americans regarding spending TRILLIONS of dollars to fix the housing market, the banks, and the economy. SPECIFICALLY WHO WILL PAY… WHO WILL BENEFIT.… and above all the government’s role in all of this.” He says he never supported government bailouts of any kind, neither by the Bush administration nor the Obama administration. His “rant,” he writes, “was spontaneous… not scripted… and any person, organization, or media outlet that claims otherwise IS INACCURATE.… Though it has been reported that I am a registered Republican, I have no political agenda and any person, organization, or media outlet that claims otherwise IS INACCURATE. I hope that the president and the final stimulus plan succeed.” [CNBC, 3/2/2009] The same day that CNBC posts Santelli’s column, it also issues a denial to the press that Santelli has any connection to the “tea party” organizations (see March 2, 2009).

Megan McArdle. [Source: New Economist (.com)]The Atlantic’s business blogger, Megan McArdle, lambasts Playboy for publishing an article that claims the Rick Santelli “tea party” “rant” (see February 19, 2009) may have been a pre-planned incident designed to coincide with the launch of a number of “tea party” Web sites and “grassroots” organizations (see February 27, 2009). McArdle says that the suspicious timing of the chicagoteaparty.com Web site launch, hours after Santelli’s “impromptu” rant on CNBC, was nothing more than an example of someone “leap[ing] in when opportunity arose.” McArdle denies that oil giant Koch Industries, or the Koch family, funds the conservative lobbying firm FreedomWorks (see April 14, 2009), and says, “[A]stroturfing [the practice of forming fake ‘grassroots’ organizations clandestinely organized and funded by lobbying groups or corporate entities] doesn’t really seem like their style.” McArdle may not be aware of a recent Wall Street Journal expose of a FreedomWorks “astroturf” endeavor (see May 16, 2008). She does acknowledge that since FreedomWorks does not publicize its donor list, she cannot be sure Koch is not funding the group. She admits that many “tea party” organizations are funded and operated by large conservative PR and lobbying firms, and writes: “So what? Groups—often funded by God knows who—coordinate protests.” McArdle calls the article’s allegation that Santelli participated in a pre-planned, scripted event “potentially libelous,” and writes, “If I were Santelli, I’d sue.” At the very end of her column, McArdle admits that she lives with a former FreedomWorks official, Peter Suderman. She denies that Suderman influenced her writing in any way except to give her an e-mail address of “the right employee to… make inquiries” of at the firm. “I haven’t asked him about his former employer, and he hasn’t told me anything. I debated whether to write about this, but since I’m not actually defending FreedomWorks, I think it’s kosher.” [Atlantic Monthly, 3/2/2009] Shortly after posting her column online, McArdle posts a follow-up, with details of her conversation with FreedomWorks official Brendan Steinhauser. She identifies Steinhauser as “the chap at FreedomWorks who has helped organize the tea parties.” She calls the firm “completely open about their interest in furthering the tea parties” (see May 16, 2008 and March 13, 2009 and After). She says Steinhauser got the idea for the “tea parties” from Michelle Malkin’s blog, which is at odds with Santelli’s claim of “spontaneously” using the term (see March 2, 2009). [Atlantic Monthly, 3/2/2009]

CNBC denies that its financial commentator, Rick Santelli, has any connection to the “tea party” organizations that apparently spontaneously erupted within hours of his February 19 “rant” against the government bailouts of banks and automobile manufacturers (see February 19, 2009 and February 27, 2009). Santelli has also denied any affiliation with any “tea party” organizations (see March 2, 2009). The Associated Press notes that the Web site of one such organization, reteaparty.com, removed Santelli’s name from its front page after CNBC made it aware of its “dissatisfaction.” The site referred to “Rick Santelli’s Re-Tea Party” four times on its home page, urging people to organize for protests, featured an “About Rick” link with his CNBC profile, and said Santelli “voiced the sentiment of millions of Americans on the stock market floor.” The site is operated by an organization called the Political Exploration and Awareness Committee, and, in small type at the bottom of the home page, states that the “opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Rick Santelli.” The Re-Tea Party Web site is operated by California Web developer Anthony Astolfi, who worked for the 2008 presidential campaign of Representative Ron Paul (R-TX). Astolfi tells reporters that he put together the site overnight after seeing Santelli’s rant. According to the Associated Press: “He and others online are using Santelli’s statement to promote a Boston Tea Party-style protest against the government plan. Using Santelli’s name was the most effective way of drawing attention to his site, Astolfi said. He denied it was an attempt to mislead people into believing Santelli supported what they were doing.” [Associated Press, 3/2/2009] CNBC has cancelled Santelli’s upcoming appearance on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, with a spokesman saying, “It was time to move on to the next big story.” [New York Times, 3/2/2009]

Chuck Norris approved this photo illustration of himself with the tag line, ‘Contrary to popular belief, America is not a democracy, it is a Chucktatorship.’ [Source: ChuckNorrisFacts (.com)]Conservative talk radio and Fox News host Glenn Beck interviews self-described “martial arts master, actor, and political activist” Chuck Norris on his radio show. Beck begins by telling Norris he wants to see a military investigation of Congress: “I was talking about General [David] Petraeus [the commander of US forces in the Middle East] the other day. I mean this sincerely: I would love to have General Petraeus go up to Washington and clean that hornet’s nest out. I’d like him to set up a military tribunal and call them in one by one, okay, going to have a little interview with you. Find out if they’re guilty or innocent of being involved in, you know, all kinds of the scandals that are going on and kick them out.” Norris offers to mete out some extrajudicial justice: “I want to go with General Petraeus myself and be next to him and when he finds out who’s guilty and, you know, dishonest, then I will take care of it for him. Took him out. I’ll choke them out, the ones that he finds dishonest, I will choke them out and stick them into a pile.” Later in the conversation, the two discuss the possibility of Texas seceding from the United States. Norris, a Texas resident, says, “Yeah, we could break off from the union if we wanted to.” Beck agrees: “You do, you call me.… Seriously, you do. I don’t mind having that lone star on my flag. I really don’t mind it. I’ve been out with a seam ripper looking at my flag going, I don’t know, California could go. I’m just saying—” Norris interjects jokingly, “I may run for president of Texas.” [Glenn Beck, 3/3/2009] Beck is putting together a conservative anti-government movement called “We Surround Them,” and Norris is an enthusiastic supporter (see March 9, 2009). [Glenn Beck, 3/10/2009]

Mark Ames and Yasha Levine, the reporters-turned-bloggers who recently caused a firestorm of controversy with their article on Playboy.com accusing CNBC commentator Rick Santelli of colluding with FreedomWorks and the Koch family in launching the anti-Obama “tea party” movement (see February 19, 2009 and February 27, 2009), discuss Playboy’s recent unexplained deletion of their article from its Web site. AlterNet editor Jan Frel writes that Playboy’s action was likely taken due to fear of libel suits. In an e-mail to Frel, Ames and Levine write: “There has been a lot of speculation as to why Playboy removed our original article from its site. Let us put it this way: When you look at the fallout from our article—FreedomWorks admits its role in the teaparty, Santelli issues a giant lawyer-penned opus about how he loves Obama (see March 2, 2009), and CNBC (whose parent company is the megaconglomerate General Electric) frightens a bunch of Astroturfing Web sites into dropping Santelli’s name and into revealing their own PAC sponsors (see March 2, 2009)—then it’s clear we hit the bull’s-eye and stirred up the wrath of a very scary monster. Given all of this, it would not be unreasonable for one to consider the possibility (as many have) that the multigazilliondollar megabeast GE threatened the much smaller independent media company Playboy with a terrifying and expensive lawsuit, which, given the current financial crisis, is not something anyone but another GE-sized megabeast could cope with. ‘Nuf said on that.” Frel notes that some of the critics of Ames and Levine have their own ties to the subjects of the controversy. Playboy has a film deal with NBC Universal, the parent company of CNBC. The New York Times, which has been critical of the story, has disclosed its content-sharing agreement with CNBC. And Atlantic Monthly blogger Megan McArdle, who has attacked the credibility of the story, has disclosed that she lives with a man who used to work for FreedomWorks and who has engaged in similar “astroturfing” incidents as the ones Ames and Levine reported on in their article (see March 2, 2009). [AlterNet, 3/3/2009]

The students who run Dartmouth College’s “Generic Good Morning Message” (GGMM), a popular email update, post an essay about incoming college president Jim Yong Kim that many find racist and derogatory. Kim is a noted researcher and human rights advocate, with recent missions to Uganda. The essay includes such statements as: “Unless ‘Jim Yong Kim’ means ‘I love Freedom’ in Chinese, I don’t want anything to do with him. Dartmouth is America, not Panda Garden Rice Village Restaurant”; “It was a complete supplies” (employing stereotypical Asian-accented English); “Y’all get ready for an Asianification under the guise of diversity under the actual Malaysian-invasion leadership instituted under the guise of diversity. It’s a slippery slope we are on. I for one want democracy and apple pie, not Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen”; and others. The essay accuses Kim of being an Asian forcing “another hard-working American” out of a job, to be replaced “by an immigrant willing to work in substandard conditions at near-subsistent wage, saving half his money and sending the rest home to his village in the form of traveler’s checks.” GGMM later claims the message was intended as humor and satire, but “was executed in poor taste and offended many people in our community, as well as in the entire campus.… [N]o one on any level thinks what happened this morning was in any way acceptable, GGMM writers included. All seven writers of the GGMM realize the gravity of the statements made in the blitz, regardless of intent, and are taking internal measures towards a resolution.” GGMM will apologize for being racially offensive and acknowledges the lack of oversight on its part. [IvyGate, 3/4/2009]

Michael Savage, a conservative radio host, calls President Obama a “dictator” as part of a larger diatribe against the president. He calls Obama “a young, articulate rabble-rouser” who “is espousing a message that I call ‘trickle-up poverty’.… Where it ends? I know where it ends, because I’ve studied history. I know where it ends. The signal as to when this begins, when the end begins, will be when he organizes a militia directly under his own control. He will not call it a militia. It will be called, perhaps, the ‘Ecology Corps’ or the ‘Environment Corps,’ or the ‘Global Warming Corps,’ or the ‘Energy Corps.’” Savage may be referring to Obama’s efforts to revive the moribund Americorps, a volunteer organization (see November 11, 2008 and March 31, 2009). “Whatever it will be called, they will all wear uniforms. They will either be blue denim or green denim. They will have the executive power under the ‘urban czar’ to come into your home without any court order to investigate your energy use, but they will be looking for other things as well. Would you have any chance to stand up to this army of Obamaites?” Savage asks, rhetorically, if he has “gone over the edge,” and then says: “I’ve gone over the edge before, and every time I have, I’ve been right eventually. I see the handwriting on the wall. Obama is a dictator.” Savage accuses liberals of failing to understand that any dictatorship, leftist or rightist, “is not going to be good for your children.” He then shouts, “Someone has to oppose this man.” He also claims that the White House “is going after” anyone who criticizes it, and repeatedly mixes his accusations of “government” persecution with “media” persecution of White House or Obama critics. “Fundamentally,” Savage concludes, “we have a dictatorship emerging.… Now I’ll make another prediction. I predict that very soon, Obama will create a crisis along the lines of the Reichstag Fire [the 1933 attack on the Reichstag by Nazi militiamen, who later blamed the fire on Communists, and used the attack to gain control of the German government]. I don’t know what form it will take. But I believe that once the minions are seen for what they are, Rahm Emanuel [the White House chief of staff] and his gang will set off a Reichstag Fire in this country of some kind, and they will” begin arresting US citizens without warrants much as President Lincoln did during the Civil War. “I will tell you as I sit here I fear that every night as I go to sleep.” Savage offers no evidence for any of his claims. [Media Matters, 3/4/2009] Two days later, Savage calls Obama a “neo-fascist dictator in the making.” [Media Matters, 3/6/2009] Savage has called the landmark civil rights decision Brown v. Board “sickening” (see May 18, 2004), accused Obama of being educated in a radical Islamic madrassa (see January 10, 2008 and April 3, 2008) and being a potential “radical Muslim” (see February 21, 2008), called Obama’s presidential victory “the first affirmative-action election in American history” (see February 1, 2008), accused Obama of being sympathetic towards the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese of World War II (see March 13, 2008), said that homeless Americans should be put in “work camps” (see June 6, 2008), called Obama an “Afro-Leninist” (see June 6, 2008), said that welfare recipients should lose the right to vote (see October 22, 2008), accused Obama of using his grandmother’s death to conceal his “efforts” to falsify his Hawaiian birth certificate (see November 10, 2008), and accused Obama of planning to fire all the “competent white men” in government once he became president (see November 18, 2008). Other conservatives, including Fox News’s Glenn Beck, will accuse Obama of being a Nazi, or of intending to create a “Reichstag Fire” crisis to gain power (see September 29, 2009 and October 3, 2010).

Gregory Hollister. [Source: Tiny Politics (.com)]The US District Court of the District of Columbia dismisses a lawsuit brought against President Obama (naming him “Barry Soetoro” in the complaint) by retired Air Force Colonel Gregory Hollister, who challenges Obama’s citizenship. Judge James Robertson begins his order of dismissal by writing: “This case, if it were allowed to proceed, would deserve mention in one of those books that seek to prove that the law is foolish or that America has too many lawyers with not enough to do. Even in its relatively short life the case has excited the blogosphere and the conspiracy theorists. The right thing to do is to bring it to an early end.” Robertson rules that Hollister is likely working on behalf of lawyer Philip Berg, whose Pennsylvania lawsuit against Obama’s citizenship was recently dismissed (see August 21-24, 2008). “Mr. Hollister is apparently Mr. Berg’s fallback brainstorm, essentially a straw plaintiff, one who could tee Mr. Berg’s native-born issue up” in another venue and using a new theory: that Hollister’s fears of Obama being an “illegal alien” could jeopardize his ability to respond to a possible call to rejoin the military. Robertson calls Hollister’s claims “frivolous” and terms Berg and his partner, lawyer Lawrence J. Joyce, “agents provocateurs” seeking to waste the court’s time and bring false and malicious charges against Obama. He concludes that the lawyer who filed the brief on Hollister’s behalf, John D. Hemenway, is an officer of the court who is “directly responsible to this court for the pleadings that have been filed on behalf of the plaintiff.” Hemenway, Robertson rules, will “show cause why he has not violated Rules 11(b)(1) and 11(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and why he should not be required to pay reasonable attorneys fees and other expenses to counsel for the defendants.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 3/5/2009]

Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN—see October 17-22, 2008), interviewed by conservative radio host William Bennett, decries what she calls the Obama administration’s push for “socialized medicine” and a “new tax on energy,” and says: “If you want to look at economic history over the last 100 years, I call it punctuated equilibrium. If you look at FDR, LBJ, and Barack Obama, this is really the final leap to socialism.… And as the Democrats are about to institutionalize cartels—that’s what they’re very good at—they’re trying to consolidate power, so we need to do everything we can to thwart them at every turn to make sure that they aren’t able to, for all time, secure a power base that for all time can never be defeated.” [Think Progress, 3/5/2009] Bachmann is joined by House colleague Zach Wamp (R-TN), who says of the Obama health care plan: “It’s probably the next major step towards socialism. I hate to sound so harsh, but… this literally is a fast march towards socialism, where the government is bigger than the private sector in our country and health care’s the next major step, so we oughta all be worried about it.” [Huffington Post, 3/5/2009]

Self-described “martial arts master, actor, and political activist” Chuck Norris adds his voice to the call by some right-wing leaders for armed insurrection against the Obama administration. Norris and others are calling for open rebellion, and for the military to refuse orders from their commander in chief. Norris claims that thousands of right-wing “cell groups” have organized and are ready to launch what he calls a “second American Revolution.” Days before, he jokingly told radio host Glenn Beck that he was ready to “run for president of Texas” after Texas secedes from the US (see March 3, 2009). In an article for the conservative Web publication WorldNetDaily, Norris makes the same claim in a far more serious tone: according to Norris, Texas was never formally a part of the US, and Texas will be the first of many states to secede from the union. The need for him to run for president of Texas “may be a reality sooner than we think,” he writes. “If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.” He justifies his call for another revolution—essentially overthrowing the federal government and replacing it with one more to his liking—by writing, “[W]e’ve bastardized the First Amendment, reinterpreted America’s religious history, and secularized our society until we ooze skepticism and circumvent religion on every level of public and private life.” He asks: “How much more will Americans take? When will enough be enough? And, when that time comes, will our leaders finally listen or will history need to record a second American Revolution? We the people have the authority according to America’s Declaration of Independence, which states: That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.” Norris has joined Beck’s nascent anti-government movement, “We Surround Them,” and writes, “Thousands of cell groups will be united around the country in solidarity over the concerns for our nation” when the group meets during a live telecast and series of “meetups” on March 13. Norris closes with the words of former Texas president Sam Houston, “We view ourselves on the eve of battle,” and finishes with a plug for his latest martial arts event in Houston, “Showdown in H-Town.” [Charlotte Examiner, 3/9/2009; WorldNetDaily, 3/9/2009] According to the website of “We Surround Them,” as of March 10, less than 30 sites have agreed to host meetings, a figure somewhat lower than the “thousands” Norris claims. The national unveiling of “We Surround Them” will take place on Fox News. [Charlotte Examiner, 3/10/2009]

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter tells a New York Times reporter that the editorial staff of the Times—which she brands the “Treason Times”—should have been executed for treason for revealing the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program (see December 15, 2005). Coulter responded to a set of questions e-mailed to her regarding her upcoming debates with political satirist Bill Maher. Asked if she believes she speaks for the conservative movement, for her own fan base, or someone else, she answers, “I think I speak for all Americans who think newspaper editors who print the details of top secret anti-terrorist intelligence gathering programs on page one in wartime should be executed for treason.” [New York Times, 3/9/2009]

A lawsuit filed by failed presidential candidate Alan Keyes and handled by lawyers Orly Taitz and Gary Kreep (see November 12, 2008 and After) is dismissed by the Superior Court of California. The lawsuit asked that since President Obama’s US citizenship is “unproven,” the court bar him from serving as president until the issue is “resolved.” [Superior Court of California, 3/13/2009] Appeals of the lawsuit, going all the way to the California Supreme Court, will be dismissed as well. [Disposition: Keyes v. Bowen, 2/2/2011]

9/12 Project logo. [Source: Springfield 9/12]Conservative radio and Fox News television host Glenn Beck tearfully announces the inception of the “9/12” project, which he claims is a nonpartisan effort to reclaim the spirit of cooperation and unity that suffused the nation on September 12, 2001, the day after the 9/11 attacks. “We weren’t told how to behave that day after 9/11, we just knew,” he says. “It was right; it was the opposite of what we feel today.” With tears flowing down his cheeks, Beck asks, “Are you ready to be the person you were that day after 9/11, on 9/12?” He assures his viewers, “You are not alone,” and says that the project has already grown into “something that millions are now participating in.” The project is “not about parties or politics or anything else,” he continues, but “about proving that the real power to change America’s course still resides with you. You are the secret. You are the answer.” He apologizes for his on-air weeping, and, holding his hand over his heart, sniffles: “I just love my country, and I fear for it. And it seems that the voices of our leaders and the special interests and the media that are surrounding us, it sounds intimidating. But you know what? Pull away the curtain. You’ll realize that there isn’t anybody there. It’s just a few people that are pressing the buttons, and their voices are actually really weak. Truth is, they don’t surround us. We surround them. This is our country.” He tells his viewers to visit The912Project.com, the Web site for the new organization. Beck then cuts to his producer, Steve (Stu) Burguiere, broadcasting from a “massive gathering” in Hollywood, “one of the most liberal cities in the country.” Burguiere begins reporting from an empty room, and begins by saying, “There’s still no one here.” He reiterates Beck’s opening line of “You’re not alone, unless you’re me.” Beck says, “Well, it must be traffic or something.” [Media Matters, 3/13/2009; Media Matters, 9/11/2009] Days before, Beck had announced his “We Surround Them” movement (see March 9, 2009), featuring actor/martial arts expert and secessionist Chuck Norris. The two organizations seem to dovetail with one another, and with the “tea party” groups (see April 8, 2009). Bloggers at SaveTheRich (.com) later learn that the 9/12 movement is actually a creation of FreedomWorks (see April 14, 2009), the conservative, corporate-funded “astroturf” organization behind the 2009 anti-health care protests. The organization begins planning for its September 12, 2009 march on Washington the same day as Beck announces his 9/12 project on Fox. SaveTheRich concludes that the entire project is a collusion between Fox News and FreedomWorks. Beck does not inform his audience of the connections between the organizations and his project. [SaveTheRich (.com), 4/17/2009; Media Matters, 9/11/2009]

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says that the Obama administration’s policies endanger America, and defends his administration’s actions, including warrantless wiretapping, torture of suspected terrorists, and its economic policies. Using torture against suspected terrorists and wiretapping Americans without court orders were both “absolutely essential” to get information needed to prevent terrorist attacks similar to that of 9/11, Cheney tells a CNN audience, though he does not use the word “torture.” But Obama’s new policies are putting America at risk, he says: “President Obama campaigned against it all across the country, and now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack.” 'Pre-9/11 Mindset' - Cheney says to return to a pre-9/11 mindset of treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue, rather than a military problem, is a mistake: “When you go back to the law enforcement mode, which I sense is what they’re doing, closing Guantanamo (see January 22, 2009) and so forth… they are very much giving up that center of attention and focus that’s required, that concept of military threat that is essential if you’re going to successfully defend the nation against further attacks.” Representative Joe Sestak (D-PA), appearing after Cheney, counters Cheney’s arguments, saying that the Bush/Cheney policies undercut “what is actually the source of America’s greatness—our principles.” Sestak asks, “How can we say that keeping a man in a black hole forever—perpetually in a black hole—and saying, ‘Let’s torture when we decide to,’ is what America stands for?” Sestak is a retired admiral who led the Navy’s anti-terrorism efforts. Iraq a Success - As for Iraq, Cheney says that while his administration had to spend more money than it had anticipated, and although over 4,200 US soldiers have lost their lives fighting in that country, the invasion and occupation of Iraq is an almost-unvarnished success. The US has “accomplished nearly everything we set out to do” in Iraq, including establishing a democratic government in the Middle East, Cheney says. Cheney answers questions about the threat of supposed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction by saying, “We’ve eliminated that possibility.” Sestak disagrees, saying the problems the Bush/Cheney policies in Iraq created have overshadowed the “whole fabric” of US national security: “The cost of this war is something that I strongly believe has far, far hurt us. We’re going to recover, because we’re Americans. But Iraq was just one piece of our security, and this administration failed to realize that.” Opposition to Hill as Iraqi Ambassador - Cheney says he does not support the Obama administration’s choice of Christopher Hill as the ambassador to Iraq (see March 18, 2009). Hill successfully concluded negotiations with North Korea during the last years of the Bush administration, but Cheney repudiates his accomplishments. “I did not support the work that Chris Hill did with respect to North Korea,” he says, and adds that Hill lacks the Middle East experience necessary for him to represent the US in Baghdad. “I think it’s a choice that I wouldn’t have made,” he says. [CNN, 3/15/2009]

Martha MacCallum. [Source: The Activity Pit]Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum, host of Fox’s “straight news” show The Live Desk, airs clips of Vice President Joseph Biden taken during a September 2008 campaign event to falsely imply that Biden is contradicting the Obama administration’s current stance on the economy. MacCallum tells viewers that “after weeks of economic doom and gloom, the Obama administration is now singing a slightly different tune. Take a look at what was said in recent interviews this weekend.” Fox then airs a clip of Biden telling an audience, “The fundamentals of the economy are strong.” The clip is not from an interview held over the weekend, but from a campaign event held seven months before. MacCallum does not inform her viewers of the timing of the clip, nor does she note that Biden was criticizing Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s economic views, which he characterized as unrealistically rosy. Instead, she goes on to claim that the administration has fundamentally, and dishonestly, shifted its views on the economy from a positive campaign outlook to a more “doom and gloom” viewpoint. In the September 2008 campaign rally, Biden told a Michigan audience: “I believe that’s why John McCain could say with a straight face, as recently as this morning—and this is a quote, ‘The fundamentals of the economy are strong.’ That’s what John says. He says that ‘we’ve made great progress economically’ in the Bush years.… I could walk from here to Lansing, and I wouldn’t run into a single person who thought our economy was doing well, unless I ran into John McCain.” Alongside the Biden clip, Fox also airs footage of Austan Goolsbee, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. On March 15, Goolsbee told a Fox News Sunday audience that “the core strength of the economy is middle-class workers.” Fox airs that clip immediately after the Biden clip. What it does not air is Goolsbee’s statement just after the broadcast statement, in which he said, “Over the last eight years, before this president came into office, we saw an unbelievable squeeze on the middle class like nothing we have seen in decades.” MacCallum uses the clips to accuse the Obama administration of “singing… a bit of a different tune” now than during the campaign. [Media Matters, 3/16/2009] The next day, MacCallum apologizes for asserting the seven-month-old clip was recent. She tells viewers that Fox News “inadvertently used a piece of video of Vice President Biden saying that, quote, the fundamentals of the economy are strong. This video was from the campaign trail, when the vice president was a candidate, and was actually quoting Senator John McCain. When we get something wrong, we admit it. We did so yesterday, and for that, we apologize” (see October 13, 2009). [Media Matters, 3/17/2009]

Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck, joined by National Review deputy managing editor Kevin Williamson, asserts that Obama administration members are working behind the scenes to move towards what they call a “one-world government.” Williamson tells Beck and their viewers that Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate change, belongs to a group that is “arguing for… the same stuff that the left is always arguing for, which is transferring wealth and power out of citizens’ hands and into the government’s hands.” Williamson continues: “You know, the left always needs an emergency because they can’t get this stuff done through normal democratic means. So, in the ‘30s, it was the Depression, and then it was World War II. Then it was the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation. And then after the Soviet Union fell apart, it became the environmental movement.” Beck responds: “Right. Let me—I’m going to have them take you someplace that I like to call ‘one-world government.’” Beck later says that Browner “was involved in a socialist organization” that “wants one-world government.” Williamson agrees: “Yeah, they’re big on what they call, you know, global architecture, transnational architecture, which is just another way of saying sort of UN-style bureaucracies that would be international in nature and would de-emphasize American power and global leadership.” [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Beck and Williamson are echoing claims made in the ‘90s and later by extremist militia groups, which warned that the US government intended to implement a “new world order” (see September 11, 1990) of a one-world government that would result in the confiscation of Americans’ guns, and a general replacement of democracy for tyranny (see 1994, January 1994, February 1995, July 4-11, 1997, October 20, 1999, April 14-15, 2009, January 21, 2010, and October 11, 2010).

Greg Gutfeld of Fox’s ‘Red Eye’ during the March 17 broadcast. [Source: CTV]The host and panelists on Fox News’s satirical news show Red Eye devote a segment of their broadcast to mocking and denigrating Canadian soldiers’ service in Afghanistan. Canadian soldiers have died in disproportionately higher numbers than either their US or British counterparts (see January 4, 2008), and the head of the Canadian Army, Lieutenant General Andrew Leslie, has recently testified as to the terrific strain that service has placed on the military branch (see March 9, 2009), facts the Red Eye panelists do not share with their audience. (Progressive media watchdog site News Hounds will note than none of the Red Eye panelists have themselves served in the military of any country.) Red Eye host Greg Gutfeld opens the segment by mocking Leslie’s name, observing that “Leslie” is “an unusual name for a man.” He then says that the Canadian military would prefer to “do some yoga, paint landscapes, run on the beach in gorgeous white capri pants.” Gutfeld then asks panelist Doug Benson, “Isn’t this the perfect time to invade this ridiculous country?” Benson retorts, “I didn’t even know that they [Canada] were in the war,” and notes that he thought of Canada as a nation where people went to avoid fighting. Gutfeld asks, “Would Canada be able to get away with this if they didn’t share a border with the most powerful country in the universe?” Panelist Bill Schulz answers: “No, they probably wouldn’t. Does this surprise any of us? We have police officers and they have Mounties. Our cops ride heavily armored cars. They ride horses. We have bullet-proof vests. They have wonderful little red jackets that can be seen a mile away. This is not a smart culture, Greg.” [News Hounds, 3/22/2009; Canada National Post, 3/23/2009]Canadian Outrage - The video quickly becomes well known after four Canadian soldiers die in two separate explosions near Kandahar, and many Canadians respond with indignation and outrage. Toronto’s National Star calls the remarks “shockingly ignorant.” Dan Dugas, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense, says: “We want an apology from this so-called comedian [Gutfeld] and his panel. These are despicable, hurtful, and ignorant comments. No one is laughing and they owe Canada, and more importantly the families of each one of our fallen heroes, an apology for their ill-informed mistakes.” Steve Staples of Ottowa’s Rideau Institute calls the performance a “shameful display” at the expense of Canadian families who have lost family members, and adds, “The dismissal of Canadian efforts in Afghanistan simply rubs salt in the wounds of Canadian families whose sons and daughters have been injured or killed in the war.” MP Denis Coderre calls the performance “a disgrace.” [Canada National Post, 3/23/2009]Apology - Days after the broadcast, Gutfeld e-mails an apology. He says the segment “was in no way an attempt to make light of troop efforts,” and adds: “I realize that my words may have been misunderstood. It was not my intent to disrespect the brave men, women, and families of the Canadian military, and for that I apologize. Red Eye is a satirical take on the news, in which all topics are addressed in a lighthearted, humorous, and ridiculous manner.” Gutfeld had made a statement on Twitter hours before that read, “My apologies to the Canadian military, they probably could at least beat the Belgians.” [Canada National Post, 3/23/2009]

Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano hosts radio host Alex Jones on the online program Freedom Watch. Jones says that he has long pointed out “how hundreds of mainstream news articles a week are saying there is a new world order, a global government. It will be run by the very banks that are collapsing society by design, and we will pay carbon taxes to them.… [T]he good news is, I’ve never seen an awakening this big. And I’m seeing, you know, people like Glenn Beck talk about the new world order on Fox. I’m seeing you talk about it for years before him. We’re seeing [CNN host] Lou Dobbs talk about it. We’re seeing, you know, mainline talk show hosts—[radio host Rush] Limbaugh is even talking about global government now. [Radio host] Michael Savage is talking about how he thinks, you know, Obama may stage crises to bring in martial law.” [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Jones is echoing claims made in the ‘90s and later by extremist militia groups, which warned that the US government intended to implement a “new world order” (see September 11, 1990) of a one-world government that would result in the confiscation of Americans’ guns, and a general replacement of democracy for tyranny (see 1994, January 1994, February 1995, July 4-11, 1997, October 20, 1999, April 14-15, 2009, January 21, 2010, and October 11, 2010), and that are echoed by Fox News pundits such as Glenn Beck (see March 17, 2009), Bill O’Reilly (see April 1-2, 2009), and others (see April 6, 2009).

President Obama disagrees with recent statements from former Vice President Dick Cheney that his administration’s policies are endangering America (see February 4, 2009 and March 15, 2009). “I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney—not surprisingly,” Obama tells CBS reporter Steve Kroft. “I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can’t reconcile our core values, our Constitution, our belief that we don’t torture, with our national security interests. I think he’s drawing the wrong lesson from history. [CNN, 3/22/2009; CBS News, 3/22/2009] The facts don’t bear him out.” Cheney “is eager to defend a legacy that was unsustainable,” Obama says, and notes that Cheney’s politics reflect a mindset that “has done incredible damage to our image and position in the world.” [Raw Story, 3/22/2009; CBS News, 3/22/2009] In response to Cheney’s advocacy of extreme interrogation methods—torture—of suspected terrorists, Obama asks: “How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn’t made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment.” [Politico, 3/21/2009; CBS News, 3/22/2009] “The whole premise of Guantanamo promoted by Vice President Cheney was that, somehow, the American system of justice was not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists,” Obama continues. “This is the legacy that’s been left behind and, you know, I’m surprised that the vice president is eager to defend a legacy that was unsustainable. Let’s assume that we didn’t change these practices. How long are we going to go? Are we going to just keep on going until, you know, the entire Muslim world and Arab world despises us? Do we think that’s really going to make us safer? I don’t know a lot of thoughtful thinkers, liberal or conservative, who think that was the right approach.” [Raw Story, 3/22/2009; CBS News, 3/22/2009]

Conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly writes an op-ed that claims, apparently sarcastically, that former Vice President Cheney would have had reporters assassinated if he really controlled a military assassination squad. Responding to the allegations by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that Cheney controlled an “executive assassination wing” (see March 10, 2009), O’Reilly writes: “The other day, left-wing muckraker Seymour Hersh went on MSNBC and said he had information, provided by the usual anonymous sources, that Dick Cheney was running an assassination squad out of the White House. I have but one simple observation: If Cheney really had such a crew, Hersh would have been dead a long time ago, and so would most everybody at MSNBC.” [Boston Herald, 3/22/2009; Think Progress, 3/22/2009]

Bill Hemmer. [Source: New York Daily News]Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer, host of Fox News’s flagship news program America’s Newsroom, hosts several segments touting the April 15 “tea party” protests (see April 8, 2009 and April 15, 2009). Hemmer notes protests in Florida and Ohio that occurred in recent days, and directs viewers to the Web site for America’s Newsroom for more information. He says: “Protesters, well, they waved flags and signs and with slogans like ‘Repeal the Pork’ and ‘Our Bacon is Cooked.’ I say, our bacon is cooked. They’re popping up literally all across the country now.… If you go to our Web site, you will find a growing list of these events, hundreds of photos, and a new tea party anthem that you will hear from the man who wrote it and recorded it next hour. And there’s a list of the nationwide Tax Day tea party events coming up on the 15th of April, which will be a huge deal for those organizations. So check it out online right now” (see October 13, 2009). The song is by Lloyd Marcus of the National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of Color, who has been on what he tells Hemmer was “a 40-city ‘Stop Obama’ tour.” Marcus’s song is extremely critical of President Obama’s policies and supportive of the “tea parties.” The lyrics are posted on FoxNews.com. [Media Matters, 4/8/2009]

Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck, with former UN Ambassador John R. Bolton as his guest, says that the Obama administration is pushing for a “global currency.” The assertion is part of Beck’s larger claim that Obama wants to steer the US towards some sort of “one-world government.” Beck says: “Ambassador, everybody is calling for global currency. I think part of this is a game, but I think, also, part of it is a—I mean, now the UN is saying, you know what? We should have a global currency. It’s also a movement to tie the entire globe together into one big government. Am I wrong or right?” Beck adds later in the interview: “You’re known as a fighter. I mean, you are a guy in there, man, you were just taking the fight right to them. So, what does the average person do? I mean, the average person, they hear, you know, I might be losing my sovereignty.… What—who do—who’s on our side?” Bolton responds: “Well, you know, I think it’s important we understand what we mean by sovereignty. To Europeans and many left-wing intellectuals in this country, it’s just kind of an abstract concept that doesn’t mean much. But I think to most Americans, sovereignty means our control over our own government. It’s about self-government.” Beck later says: “Ambassador, when you say world government, it does sound nuts. And because everybody knows, nobody is for world government,” and Bolton responds: “That’s why they don’t call it world government anymore. And they’ll try and find these other phrases. But you have to look underneath of it. And it’s on a range of issues, not just the money supply, but gun control, the death penalty, abortion, all—global warming—all of which are issues we can and should debate in our—in our constitutional democratic framework. We don’t need to decide them internationally. But that’s what the agenda is of many people very close to the Obama administration.” [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Beck and Bolton are echoing claims made in the ‘90s and later by extremist militia groups, which warned that the US government intended to implement a “new world order” (see September 11, 1990) of a one-world government that would result in the confiscation of Americans’ guns, and a general replacement of democracy for tyranny (see 1994, January 1994, February 1995, July 4-11, 1997, October 20, 1999, April 14-15, 2009, January 21, 2010, and October 11, 2010), and that are echoed by Fox News pundits such as Glenn Beck (see March 17, 2009), Bill O’Reilly (see April 1-2, 2009), and others (see April 6, 2009).

Eric Cantor (R-VA), the House Minority Whip, while appearing on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” agrees with a caller that the Obama administration is moving the US towards one-party fascist rule. The caller says: “But what really is scaring the rest of us, the other half of us, is the fascism. I mean the true fascism that is happening in this country today.… The belligerent takeover of a one-party system.” Without repeating the terminology, Cantor agrees: “Now as far as a one-party government in here, I think what the public is doing, they’re finally waking up and everybody is realizing that checks and balances are a part of the system and divided government is something that is beneficial to a balanced debate, and something that can produce a better outcome. Which is exactly why Republicans in the House have said, ‘Look, we want to work with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. We want to try to bring this president back into the mainstream.’” [Think Progress, 3/25/2009]

Fox News host Sean Hannity and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) join to accuse President Obama of attempting to impose a “dictatorship” in America. Discussing the Obama administration’s plans to implement new financial regulations and oversight, Hannity begins by accusing Obama of “mov[ing] America down the road to socialism.” He asks Gingrich to “explain” to the audience “how dangerous this power grab is.” Gingrich responds: “We are seeing the biggest power grab by politicians in American history. The idea that they would propose that the treasury could intervene and take over non-bank, non-financial system assets gives them the potential to basically create the equivalent of a dictatorship.… Look, it absolutely moves it towards a political dictatorship.” [Think Progress, 3/26/2009]

Fox News host Glenn Beck, on his daily radio show, hosts US Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to discuss her proposed constitutional amendment “to prohibit the president from entering into a treaty or other international agreement that would provide for the United States to adopt as legal tender in the United States a currency issued by an entity other than the United States.” Beck says to Bachmann: “I don’t want to believe that there are people in our country that would trash our dollar like this. And what’s going to happen is if you start to talk about a global currency, which I’m telling you, there’s no way out of what we’re doing now besides devaluing the dollar to pay off our debt and then have a new currency. There’s just no other way.… [W]hat happens is when you stand up, and when you say those things, then you’re deemed a kook. Then you’re deemed a militia member.” Bachmann says later in the interview: “The president is committing us so much now, and Congress is committing us to so much spending, that the only way out will be for him to continue to print money and have wild inflation. And once that collapses, then it’s a global currency. Well, then we are no more as a nation. We cease at that point.” Beck responds: “I believe it. But convincing everybody else may be a different story.” [Glenn Beck, 3/29/2009; Media Matters, 4/10/2009]

Glenn Beck. [Source: New York Times]The New York Times profiles Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck, describing him as a “rising star” and “one of the most powerful media voices for the nation’s conservative anger.” Beck’s show typically draws about 2.3 million viewers, putting him third among all cable news hosts behind fellow Fox conservatives Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Beck describes himself as identifying with Howard Beale, the mad “television prophet” of the 1976 film Network, and particularly Beale’s most famous line, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” [New York Times, 3/29/2009] (Media pundit Eric Boehlert calls Beck’s attempt to associate himself with Beale “nonsense,” and observes: “Beale’s unvarnished on-air rants… targeted conformity, corporate conglomerates, and the propaganda power of television.… Beale’s attacks were not political or partisan. Beck, by contrast, unleashes his anger against, and whips up dark scenarios about, the new president of the United States. Big difference.”) [Media Matters, 4/7/2009]Apocalyptic Rhetoric - Though he insists he believes every word he says on his TV show as well as on his daily radio broadcast, Beck also calls himself a “rodeo clown” and an “entertainer” who reminds his listeners, “If you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot.” (Beck is a former morning show disc jockey who regularly performs stand-up comedy in shows around the country.) The Times writes that Beck “is capturing the feelings of an alienated class of Americans.” He regularly preaches against liberal politicians, hosts segments entitled “Constitution Under Attack” and “Economic Apocalypse,” and sometimes bursts into tears. [New York Times, 3/29/2009] Progressive media watchdog site Media Matters will note in a later article that Beck regularly terms President Obama a Marxist, a socialist, and/or a fascist. [Media Matters, 4/7/2009] In a recent week-long segment titled “War Games,” Beck advocated for armed citizen militias to overthrow the government (see February 20, 2009), though he later denied such advocacy. America is “on the road to socialism,” he tells his viewers, and claims, “God and religion are under attack in the US.” He recently accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of setting up “concentration camps” for citizen dissenters, presumably conservatives. He has accused the Obama administration of trying to “indoctrinate… your child into community service through the federal government” [Media Matters, 3/27/2009] , says America is about to go through “depression and revolution” [Media Matters, 2/13/2009] , and, three days after the Times article is published, compares the administration’s actions to those in “the early days of Adolf Hitler.” [Media Matters, 4/1/2009] He will accuse the government of being what he calls “a heroin pusher using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state.” [Media Matters, 3/31/2009]Voice of the 'Disenfranchised' - Phil Griffin, the president of Fox News cable rival MSNBC, says of Beck: “That’s good dramatic television. That’s who Glenn Beck is.” Tom Rosenstiel, the director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, says: “There are absolutely historical precedents for what is happening with Beck. There was a lot of radio evangelism during the Depression. People were frustrated and frightened. There are a lot of scary parallels now.” Conservative writer David Frum calls Beck’s success “a product of the collapse of conservatism as an organized political force, and the rise of conservatism as an alienated cultural sensibility.” Beck’s shows are “for people who feel they belong to an embattled minority that is disenfranchised and cut off,” Frum adds. Fox News senior vice president Joel Cheatwood says Beck’s audience is “somewhat disenfranchised,” and adds, “[I]t’s a huge audience.” Author and media professor Jeffrey Jones says that Beck engages in “inciting rhetoric. People hear their values are under attack and they get worried. It becomes an opportunity for them to stand up and do something.” Beck denies inciting attacks on the government or any other citizens, saying that those “who are spreading the garbage that I’m stirring up a revolution haven’t watched the show.” Fellow talk show host Bill Maher recently accused Beck of producing “the same kind of talking” that led Timothy McVeigh to bomb a federal building in 1995 (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995); Beck responded by saying in part: “Let me be clear. If someone tries to harm another person in the name of the Constitution or the ‘truth’ behind 9/11 or anything else, they are just as dangerous and crazy as those we don’t seem to recognize anymore, who kill in the name of Allah.” [New York Times, 3/29/2009] (The Times does not publish Beck’s next line: “There are enemies both foreign and domestic in America tonight. Call it fearmongering or call it the truth.”) [Media Matters, 4/7/2009] He describes himself as having to “be… the guy I don’t want to be—the guy saying things that are sometimes pretty scary, but nobody else is willing to say them.” Currently Beck is the voice of the “We Surround Them” movement (see March 3, 2009) and is part of the “Tea Party” or “teabaggers” civil protest project (see April 8, 2009). [New York Times, 3/29/2009]

The New York Post publishes an article headlined “Scary! Obama nominee wants one world order.” The article, by Post reporter Meghan Clyne, attacks President Obama’s nomination of Yale Law School dean Harold Koh as legal adviser to the State Department. Clyne says Koh is a “fan of ‘transnational legal process,’ arguing that the distinctions between US and international law should vanish.” She says that according to Koh’s views, judges should put aside the Constitution in favor of “legal ‘norms’” from other nations’ laws. “Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts,” she writes. “The United States constitutes an ‘axis of disobedience’ along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq.” The newly launched Fox Nation, the blog for Fox News, links to the article, which disappears from the Post’s Web archive shortly thereafter. [Fox Nation, 3/31/2009; Media Matters, 4/10/2009] An extraordinarily racist conservative blog, Chimpout, hosts a forum discussion of the article under the heading “Osambo picks another douche bag for his cabinet.” The forum’s thread is part of a larger discussion section entitled “N_gger College” and a subsection entitled “F_cked Up Facts about First Monkey,” an apparent reference to Obama. Commenters immediately begin launching “birther”-styled accusations of Obama being an illegal president because of his “Kenyan birth” (see October 8, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, and August 4, 2009), and say Obama should be relegated to “picking cotton.” [Chimpout, 3/31/2009] Days later, Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck, conservative editor Cliff Kincaid, and former Republican Senator Rick Santorum will join in attacking Koh (see April 1, 2009, April 6, 2009, and April 9, 2009).

Dick Morris discussing the economy on Fox News. [Source: Fox News]Conservative political pundit Dick Morris tells a Fox News audience that the recent G20 economic summit advocated a “global approach” to the current economic crisis, and discussed putting both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Reserve under the control of the International Monetary Fund—a position not advocated or discussed by anyone in the Obama administration. He worries that there will soon be what he calls “a supernational authority run by bureaucrats, not by elected officials, that will be telling the elected governments, including the United States, what its [economic] regulations should be.” President Obama is far more amenable to the idea of allowing a multinational authority to control the US economy, Morris insists, and adds that Obama intends to preside over what he calls “a global redistribution of income, downward,” using environmental policy as “an excuse.” “We’re about to meet Barack Obama the internationalist,” Morris continues, “not fighting for American interests, but looking for global coordination.” He concludes, “Those crazies in Montana who say, ‘We’re going to kill ATF agents because the UN’s going to take over’—well, they’re beginning to have a case.” [Media Matters, 3/31/2009]

Americorps/VISTA logo. [Source: Americorps]Congress sends the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act to President Obama, who will sign the act into law sometime in April. The bill passed both houses of Congress with large majorities. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who co-sponsored the Senate legislation, says the bill is “probably the most bipartisan bill we will see on the Senate floor this year.” House Republicans wrote in the House committee report: “[W]e applaud the inclusion of reforms that Committee Republicans have long championed to ensure that recipients of taxpayer funds are held accountable for results. We are pleased to join with the Majority in supporting bipartisan efforts to strengthen the national service laws and improve service delivery throughout the country.” The bill provides for the expansion of the AmeriCorps program from 75,000 to 250,000, creating new groups of volunteers focusing on health care, education, renewable energy, and veterans, and reauthorizing such AmeriCorps organizations as VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) and the National Civilian Community Corps. The Kennedy Act also calls for awarding college students who complete a full-time national service job an “educational award having a value equal to the maximum amount of a Federal Pell Grant.” AmeriCorps says this would increase the amount its members receive upon completion of service from $4,725 to $5,350, which they can use to pay for school or pay back student loans. First Lady Michelle Obama says the bill is of particular concern to her, as volunteerism is one of her priorities. The legislation was originally known as the “Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education (GIVE) Act,” but senators renamed it in honor of ailing Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), who helped craft the bill. Kennedy says of its final passage in the House of Representatives: “Today’s House vote again demonstrates the high priority Congress gives to encouraging citizens of all ages in all communities across America to participate in public service. This legislation will enable many more Americans to do something for their country to meet the many challenges facing us. I look forward to the president signing this bill into law so that a welcome new era of national and community service can begin.” The bill also establishes September 11 as a national day of service. [New York Times, 3/31/2009; Annenberg Political Fact Check, 3/31/2009]'Re-Education Camps' - Some Republican lawmakers, along with a variety of conservative pundits and radio show hosts, have claimed that the bill is far more sinister than it seems. House Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) says the bill will allow the Obama administration to create what she calls “re-education camps for young people…” Bachmann tells a Minnesota radio audience: “It’s under the guise of—quote—volunteerism. But it’s not volunteers at all. It’s paying people to do work on behalf of government.… I believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service. And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums. [Minnesota Independent, 4/6/2009] The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org receives numerous letters asking questions such as: “Is Congress creating a mandatory public service system? Are participants not allowed to go to church?” One writer tells FactCheck: “I have been getting all kinds of e-mails from people claiming that bill calls for mandatory service and in violation of our 13th amendment, and that I should call my congressman and tell them that this bill is modern day slavery. I have also received e-mails saying that service would still be voluntary and that the bill is just expanding current volunteer opportunities.… There is a lot of confusion out there right now regarding this very important legislation and was hoping you guys could shed some light.” Debunking Claims - FactCheck reports, “The national service bill does not mandate that youth must participate nor does it forbid anyone who does participate from going to church.” It notes that many conservative pundits and bloggers have claimed that the bill “requires the government to draw up plans for a ‘mandatory service requirement for all able young people.’ Others say the bill forbids participants from attending church. These claims are false. Neither the House-passed bill nor the Senate-passed version says these things.” 'Mandatory Service Requirement?' - Bachmann and others have also claimed that the bill provides for a “mandatory service requirement for all able young people,” but that provision is not in any version of the bill. The original House bill did advance that as an idea worthy of study, and called for a “Congressional Commission on Civil Service” to “address and analyze” several topics, including “issues that deter volunteerism” and how they can be overcome, how expanding international public service might affect diplomacy and foreign relations, and “[w]hether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation.” The proposed commission would also investigate “[t]he need for a public service academy, a 4-year institution that offers a federally funded undergraduate education with a focus on training future public sector leaders.” However, that entire section was removed from the final bill. Hatch has confirmed that the bill contains no such provisions, saying on the floor of the Senate: “Consistent with our All-Volunteer Army and volunteer opportunities and individuals’ choice in communities, nothing in this legislation is mandatory. This bill simply provides more Americans more choices and opportunities to give back to their neighborhoods and their country all through the means which they freely choose.” The bill does provide for the inclusion of service-learning programs in public schools. Church Attendance Prohibited? - Perhaps the most inflammatory claim is the one promulgated on conservative blogs and talk radio shows claiming that the bill would prohibit volunteers from attending church. FactCheck notes that such a provision “would be an incredibly draconian law—and a clear violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of religion, upon which this country was founded…” The claim seems to originate from the Jonas Clark Ministries, which has made Web postings and sent out mass e-mails claiming that the language of section 125 of the bill “prohibited activities and ineligible organizations,” and as such volunteers would be prohibited from attending church. The bill makes no such prohibition. It does, however, says that national service volunteers cannot attempt to “influence legislation,” organize “protests, petitions, boycotts or strikes,” promote “union organizing,” engage in “partisan political activities, or other activities designed to influence the outcome of an election to any public office,” and engage in “religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of religious proselytization.” The language is virtually identical to what AmeriCorps and Senior Corps has told their volunteers for years. FactCheck writes: “In other words, public service activities can’t include anything overtly religious or political. And this is nothing new.” AmeriCorps spokesman Sandy Scott later tells FactCheck: “Both House- and Senate-passed bills codify long-standing regulatory restrictions on engaging in certain activities while ‘on-duty’ as an AmeriCorps member. They do not cover what individuals do on their own time at their own initiative.” [Annenberg Political Fact Check, 3/31/2009]

The image used by San Mateo tea partiers to promote their upcoming anti-tax, pro-Ron Paul event. [Source: Contra Costa Times]Ron Nehring, the chairman of the San Mateo, California, Republican Party asks local tea party organizers not to use what Nehring calls anti-Semitic graphics to advertise their upcoming events. A graphic on a Web site asking for tea party members to attend an anti-tax rally depicts a bucket of money being poured into a funnel with a Star of David on it, which in turn drips blood into a bottle where a person holding a Palestinian flag is seen drowning in blood. The text reads: “Uncle Sam Reminds You: KEEP PAYING TAXES. The ongoing extermination of Palestinian Children Can’t be Done Without Your Help.” The tea party organization is affiliated with the presidential campaign of Representative Ron Paul (R-TX). Nehring writes: “The taxpayer movement is incredibly important for California, and we applaud the success of the tea parties that took place across the state on April 15. Because we remain intensely interested in the growth and success of the mainstream taxpayer movement, we strongly condemn the use of anti-Semitic imagery in the promotion of the recent event in San Mateo County.” [Contra Costa Times, 4/20/2009; Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 10/19/2010] The organizing group responds by taking its Meetup.com page private, thus denying access to non-members. Group leader Kathy McGrade writes to the Contra Costa Times that the organization has no direct affiliation to Paul, nor does it control the content on its Meetup pages. She accuses Nehring of enlarging the image to “read the fine print, something I had not done,” and says, “In retrospect I may have chosen a different graphic had I first scrutinized it more carefully.” McGrade then says the image is merely “provocative” and not anti-Semitic or anti-Israel, and attacks Nehring for calling the image posters “fringe” members of the tea party movement. Nehring, she writes, has launched “an unjustified smear of Dr. Paul and the people who support him.” [Contra Costa Times, 4/22/2009]

The right-wing advocacy group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), funded largely by Koch Industries (see August 30, 2010), has worked closely with the “tea party” movement since its inception (see February 27, 2009 and April 15, 2009). In the weeks before the first Tax Day protests (see April 8, 2009, April 15, 2009, and April 15, 2009), AFP hosts a Web site offering its visitors “Tea Party Talking Points.” The Arizona branch of AFP urges people to send tea bags to President Obama. The Missouri AFP urges its members to sign up for “Taxpayer Tea Party Registration” and provides driving directions to nine protests. After the protests, the North Carolina AFP will launch a “Tea Party Finder” Web site, advertised as “a hub for all the Tea Parties in North Carolina.” [New Yorker, 8/30/2010]

Alisyn Camerota. [Source: Fox News]Several media outlets report discredited Republican claims that the Obama administration’s “cap-and-trade” global warming initiative would cost American taxpayers over $3,000 per year. Fox News anchors Eric Shawn and Alisyn Camerota (see October 13, 2009), CNN producer Ted Barrett, and the Washington, DC, newspaper Roll Call repeat the claim, which originated in a March 23 House Republican Conference (HRC) “talking points” press release. [GOP (.gov), 3/23/2009; Media Matters, 4/6/2009] The claim points to a 2007 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but one of the study’s authors, John Reilly, says the Republicans’ interpretation of it is wrong (see March 24 - April 2, 2009). Reilly says the average household cost of $3,128, as calculated by the HRC, is “nearly 10 times the correct estimate” based on his study’s cap-and-trade model. The HRC’s error is further shown by a March 30 analysis conducted by the St. Petersburg Times. [St. Petersburg Times, 3/30/2009; Media Matters, 4/6/2009] Both Reilly and the Times show that the average annual cost per household will be closer to $340. On Fox News’s America’s News HQ, Shawn claims “this cap-and-trade, or as the Republicans call it, cap-and-tax—could add $3,000 a year on our electric bills.… [T]hat’s about—$290 or so a month. I mean, imagine the American public, everyone watching right now—all of us—getting an extra 300 bucks or so a month tacked on to our utility bills.” Camerota tells viewers of Fox News’s America’s Newsroom that the cap-and-trade proposal “would be $3,100 per US household.” Roll Call’s Jay Heflin publishes a claim by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) that “the effort equates to a ‘light switch tax’ of up to $3,128 each year for families” without informing readers of Reilly’s and the Times’s differing analysis. [Media Matters, 4/6/2009; Roll Call, 4/6/2009] Similarly, on CNN’s Political Ticker blog, Barrett repeats a similar claim, writing, “Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell praised the Senate for having ‘slammed the door on using the fast-track process to jam through a new national energy tax’ that Republicans say will cost families $3,000 a year in higher energy costs.” [CNN, 4/1/2009; Media Matters, 4/6/2009]

Twice in the same broadcast, Fox News airs a segment called “FOXFacts” that echoes almost verbatim claims made in a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI). Ryan appears for an interview on Fox News’s Happening Now, a “straight news” broadcast, hours after his editorial appears in print, and is interviewed by co-host Jon Scott. The seven “FOXFacts,” which appear on-screen during the interview, are nearly identical to the claims and even the wording of Ryan’s editorial. In February, Scott passed off a Republican press release as independently researched news, even to the point of repeating a typographical error from the press release (see February 10, 2009). Ryan and the accompanying FOXFacts claim that the Republican budget proposal achieves lower deficits than the Obama plan, prioritizes national defense and veterans’ health care, rejects Obama’s “cap-and-trade scheme,” makes permanent the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthy, lowers capital gains and dividend taxes, repeals estate taxes, and slashes corporate income taxes. An hour later, while interviewing Rob Nabors, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Scott again airs the same “FOXFact” graphics. [Media Matters, 4/1/2009; Media Matters, 4/1/2009; Wall Street Journal, 4/1/2009] Before appearing on Fox, Ryan admits to MSNBC host Joe Scarborough that the Republican “budget plan” is nothing more than a “marketing document” containing few specifics (see April 1, 2009).

Fox News host Glenn Beck, speaking on his daily radio show, lambasts President Obama’s nomination of Yale Law School dean Harold Koh as legal adviser to the State Department. Beck says Koh “believes in internationalism. He believes that we should not have a Constitution, that the Constitution is trumped by international law.” Beck later says: “[T]he idea is, have our courts answer to international law. Forget about the Constitution. Forget about your sovereignty.” [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Days later, conservative editor Cliff Kincaid and former Republican Senator Rick Santorum will join Beck in attacking Koh (see April 6, 2009 and April 9, 2009).

Former Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, president of the Party of European Socialists, writes a Wall Street Journal op-ed that advocates a greater level of communication and cooperation between governments to address the global economic crisis. Rasmussen writes in part: “We must keep up the pressure by demanding a globalization that works for everyone, and forge new alliances and new lines of communication across national boundaries. We must develop new, progressive ways to achieve global justice.” He advocates the expansion of European “state health care, social housing, education, unemployment support, and other universal, tax-funded services” to “the developing world, where according to the World Health Organization between 200,000 and 400,000 additional children will die each year due to the global economic downturn.” He calls free-market capitalist ideology “simplistic” as “championed by Reagan, Thatcher, and their ideological heirs,” and a failure “on a momentous scale.” The next night, Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly attacks Rasmussen as advocating a Marxist solution, and espousing a “one-world” view. O’Reilly says: “Well, Karl Marx could not have said it better. Global justice requires that a one-world government seize private property and distribute it so that every human being has roughly the same amount of resources. The Denmark guy’s vision is nothing new, but it’s now being recycled as justice.” O’Reilly says that “[s]ome believe Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), and President Obama himself are sympathetic to the one-world, global-justice view,” and concludes: “Key question: Where does Barack Obama stand? Are the right-wing pundits correct? Is he down with the global-justice jihad? There’s no hard evidence to suggest that he is, but he has not repudiated the false vision either. Until President Obama does, speculation will rage.” [Wall Street Journal, 4/2/2009; Media Matters, 4/10/2009] O’Reilly is following recent, similar claims by Fox News guest Alex Jones (see March 18, 2009), Fox host Glenn Beck and his guests (see March 17, 2009 and March 24, 2009), and Fox News contributor Charles Payne (see March 24, 2009).

Rick Santelli, the CNBC commentator whose on-air “rant” is credited for sparking the right-wing “tea party” movement (see February 19, 2009 and February 27, 2009), refuses to take part in the upcoming April 15 anti-tax rallies being put on across the country by various “tea party” organizations (see April 15, 2009). CNBC spokesman Brian Steel says Santelli is “not going and not in any way involved” in the protests. Fox News anchors Neil Cavuto and Sean Hannity are joining with protesters in Sacramento and Atlanta, respectively, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich plans to attend a rally in New York. Organizers say over 300 different protests will take place across the nation. Eric Odom, who owns a Chicago-based “tea party” Web site, says, “We have fully confirmed protests in 360 cities” and he is “very confident that all the protests will happen.” Odom predicts that the rallies featuring Cavuto and Hannity will bring at least 5,000 to 10,000 participants. He stresses that the protests will be made up of people from “all walks of life,” not just conservatives opposed to the Obama administration’s policies. Odom does not mention Santelli’s non-involvement. [Huffington Post, 4/2/2009]

Conservative pundits on Fox News and other media outlets falsely claim that President Obama ceded the government’s authority over its economy to an international consortium during the G-20 summit, which concluded on April 2, 2009 in London. On April 3, pundit Dick Morris appears on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom to claim that Obama “effectively ceded massive areas of American sovereignty to Europe and to the global economic mavens.… [T]his literally is a massive surrender of sovereignty to an essentially European body.” On April 3, US Representative Don Manzullo (R-IL) tells CNN’s Kitty Pilgrim that Treasury Secretary Timothy “Geithner’s proposing, with the help of the administration, a worldwide international control over all financial interests—in fact, over any corporation, to the extent of even controlling the compensation of the employees. That’s not only radical, Kitty, that’s frightening.” Pilgrim responds, “Yeah, it certainly is.” On April 5, Fox News host Monica Crowley, appearing on the syndicated McLaughlin Group, says the G-20 agreement is “the first step to abrogating American sovereignty here, because… it is going to allow European bureaucrats to step in, not just on the hedge fund regulation and the other explicit things that they agreed to, but buried deep down in this communiqué was the ability for European bureaucrats sitting in Brussels to decide what kind of executive compensation American executives should—” Financial Times US managing editor Chrystia Freeland interjects, “No, there was no authority like that there, Monica.” Crowley responds, “I read it in the communique this morning.” [Media Matters, 4/7/2009] In an April 6 column titled “The Declaration of Independence Has Been Repealed,” Morris writes: “On April 2, 2009, the work of July 4, 1776 was nullified at the meeting of the G-20 in London. The joint communique essentially announces a global economic union with uniform regulations and bylaws for all nations, including the United States. Henceforth, our SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission], Commodities Trading Commission, Federal Reserve Board, and other regulators will have to march to the beat of drums pounded by the Financial Stability Board (FSB), a body of central bankers from each of the G-20 states and the European Union.… Obama, perhaps feeling guilty for the US role in triggering the international [economic] crisis, has, indeed, given away the store. Now we may no longer look to presidential appointees, confirmed by the Senate, to make policy for our economy. These decisions will be made internationally.” Noting that the FSB is numerically dominated by European members, Morris writes: “The Europeans have been trying to get their hands on our financial system for decades. It is essential to them that they rein in American free enterprise so that their socialist heaven will not be polluted by vices such as the profit motive. Now, with President Obama’s approval, they have done it.” [Dick Morris, 4/6/2009] On the evening of April 6, Morris makes the same claims on Fox News’s Hannity, telling viewers: “Basically, from an economic standpoint, [Obama’s] repealed [the Declaration of Independence]. We no longer have economic sovereignty.” [New York Times, 4/3/2009] None of these claims are true, as Freeland tried to assert. The FSB has no cross-border authority and therefore no authority over American economic decisions. On April 3, the New York Times reports, “While the [G-20] leaders agreed to create a new Financial Stability Board to monitor the financial system for signs of risks, they stopped well short of giving regulators cross-border authority, something France has long advocated.” [New York Times, 4/3/2009; Media Matters, 4/7/2009]

Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck attempts to disavow any connection between his rhetoric and accused murderer Richard Poplawski, who killed three police officers in Pittsburgh two days ago (see April 4, 2009). Poplawski said he was influenced by Beck and other conservative talk show hosts who have repeatedly warned that the government intends to forcibly confiscate citizens’ guns (see April 4, 2009). Beck tells his listeners, “[T]he press, the blogs, everybody immediately went to, ‘This guy’s a conservative with guns that says Obama’s coming.’” But later in his show, Beck repeats his assertions, telling viewers that President Obama “will slowly but surely take away your gun or take away your ability to shoot a gun, carry a gun. He will make them more expensive; he’ll tax them out of existence. He will because he has said he would. He will tax your gun or take your gun away one way or another.” [Media Matters, 4/9/2009]

Cliff Kincaid, the editor of the conservative Accuracy in Media, accuses President Obama of seeking to appoint an advocate of the “new world order” to the State Department. Kincaid is referring to Obama’s nomination of Yale Law School dean Harold Koh as legal adviser to the State Department. Kincaid says Koh’s nomination “is beyond worrisome. This is terrifying that—the thought of this kind of guy with these views becoming the top lawyer at the State Department. But seen in the light of the some of the other appointments Obama has made, it’s consistent with his push, which is now out in the open, for the US to become really subsumed into this, quote, ‘new world order’ that everybody keeps talking about, in which our sovereignty has been sacrificed for the, quote, ‘greater good.’” Kincaid is harking back to claims made in the ‘90s and later by extremist militia groups, which warned that the US government intended to implement a “new world order” (see September 11, 1990) of a one-world government that would result in the confiscation of Americans’ guns, and a general replacement of democracy for tyranny (see 1994, January 1994, February 1995, July 4-11, 1997, October 20, 1999, April 14-15, 2009, January 21, 2010, and October 11, 2010). [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Three days later, former Republican Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) will say that Obama’s nomination of the “internationalist” Koh shows that Obama is “contemptuous of American values” (see April 9, 2009).

’America’s Newsroom’ advertisement featuring Bill Hemmer. [Source: Zap2It (.com)]Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer, host of Fox News’s flagship news program America’s Newsroom, interviews several people involved with the April 15 “tea party” protests (see April 8, 2009), including Felicia Cravens, the organizer of an April 15 “tea party” in Houston. During the interview, Fox News displays information about the protest on screen. Though both Hemmer and Craven call the protests “non-partisan,” Fox displays protest footage throughout the interview criticizing President Obama. At the end of the segment, Hemmer directs viewers to go to the Web site of his program for more information about the protests. Hemmer also interviews FoxNews.com contributor Andrea Tantaros, who says of the upcoming protests, “People are fighting against Barack Obama’s radical shift to turn us into Europe.” The program also states that “Tea Parties Are Anti-Stimulus Demonstrations” and part of a “Growing Revolution” (see October 13, 2009). [Media Matters, 4/8/2009]

According to an analysis by progressive media watchdog Media Matters, Fox News airs at least 20 segments on the so-called “tea party” protests (see April 6-7, 2009, April 8, 2009, and April 13-15, 2009) scheduled for April 15 (see April 15, 2009, April 15, 2009 and April 15, 2009). The network also airs at least 73 in-show and commercial promotions for its April 15 coverage. Media Matters claims that Fox is “aggressively promot[ing] the events… encouraging viewers to get involved with tea party protests across the country.” Fox describes the events as “FNC [Fox News Channel] Tax Day Tea Parties.” The network has assigned four of its hosts, including Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Greta Van Susteren, and Neil Cavuto, to broadcast live from various “tea parties” around the nation. The analysis does not include a number of “teasers” that Fox shows air to preview upcoming segments on “tea parties.” [Media Matters, 4/15/2009] On April 15, Fox will devote much of its day’s coverage to the tea parties. [Media Matters, 9/11/2009]

Mike Gallagher. [Source: All Access (.com)]Conservative radio host Mike Gallagher discusses an exchange between the Second Amendment Foundation’s Alan Gottlieb and MSNBC anchor David Shuster that occurred the night before, on MSNBC’s Hardball. Gallagher lauds Gottlieb’s “great job in explaining logically why people are worried about what the Obama administration wants to do with our guns,” and airs a clip from the conversation in which Shuster asked Gottlieb, “Do you believe that the Obama administration and the Feds are coming to take away everybody’s guns?” Gottlieb replied: “I believe that’s what they would like to do. I don’t think we’re going to let them get away with it.” Gallagher later tells his listeners: “[L]isten to the way Gottlieb leaves the liberal columnist stuttering and stammering, explaining very eloquently why so many of us are worried and scurrying to buy guns right now.… [I]f you think the government might take your rights away from you, you want to try and exercise them before that happens. It’s a normal reaction.” Gallagher suggests “a national movement to register as many people as we can… to become gun owners,” and continues: “We’re going to set up a Web site, we’re going to get listener participation on this, we’re going to register and create as many gun owners—new, first-time gun owners as possible. I don’t even want to set a number. I’m number one—I’ll be the first one.” However, Gallagher criticizes media reports that state Pittsburgh cop-killer Richard Poplawski killed three police officers for fear that government or law enforcement officials would take away his guns (see April 4, 2009). [Media Matters, 4/7/2009; Media Matters, 4/9/2009]

Betty Brown. [Source: Houston Chronicle]Texas State Representative Betty Brown (R-Terrell) says during House testimony on voter identification legislation that since Asian-Americans often have names that are difficult for other Americans to pronounce, they should just change their names to something “easier for Americans to deal with.” The Texas House Elections Committee hears testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans, who says that Americans of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean descent often have problems with voting and with other forms of identification because they have both a legal transliterated name and then a common English name used on their driver’s license and school registrations. Brown suggests that Asian-Americans find a way to make their names more accessible, asking, “Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese—I understand it’s a rather difficult language—do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Later in the session, she tells Ko, “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?” Democratic Chairman Boyd Richie says Republicans are attempting to suppress votes with a partisan identification bill, and that Brown “is adding insult to injury with her disrespectful comments.” Brown refuses to apologize for her statements. A spokesman for Brown, Jordan Berry, says that her comments have nothing to do with race, and are merely focused on overcoming problems with identifying Asian names for voting purposes. Democrats are the ones guilty of using racial rhetoric, says Berry, not Brown: “They want this to just be about race.” [Houston Chronicle, 4/9/2009]

Screenshot of Fox News promoting the ‘Tea Party’ rally in Houston. [Source: Fox News / Media Matters]Republican lawmakers announce their intention to join with right-wing protesters on April 15, 2009, in what is envisioned as a nationwide protest against the Obama administration’s tax policies. The primary organizers are the think tanks Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, and right-wing bloggers such as Michelle Malkin. They say that under President Obama, taxes are “too high” and freedoms are being “eroded.” They have also called for Obama’s impeachment and refer to him as “Obama bin Lyin” and other derogatory nicknames. Republicans, Neo-Nazis, Secessionists Joining in 'Tea Party Protests' - Malkin has called the movement the “Tea Party Protests,” in an attempt to connect the protests with the American Revolution’s Boston Tea Party. Senator David Vitter (R-LA) is sponsoring legislation to honor the protests. Representatives David Davis (R-TN), Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Rob Bishop (R-UT), Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), John Fleming (R-LA), Ander Crenshaw (R-FL), Bob Latta (R-OH), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Sue Myrick (R-NC), Bill Posey (R-FL), and Louie Gohmert (R-TX) will attend local protests, as will Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) and former Representative J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ). Officials from Senator Bob Corker’s (R-TN) and Representative Sam Graves’s (R-MO) office will attend the rallies as well, and Representatives Denny Rehberg (R-MT), Jack Kingston (R-GA), and Tom Rooney (R-FL) are urging their constituents to attend tea party protests. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), who heads American Solutions for Winning the Futures (ASWF) and who will speak at the New York City rally, is encouraging his supporters to join the protests, and has provided them with what he calls a “toolkit” of talking points. ASWF is funded by oil and energy interests, and led the recent “Drill Here, Drill Now” campaign. ASWF has been an official “partner” in the Tea Party campaign since March. The Tea Party Protests are being joined by gun rights militias, secessionists, and neo-Nazi groups. Protests Orchestrated by Lobbyist Organizations and Promoted by Fox News - The protests are being heavily promoted on Fox News, which intends to hold all-day “news reports” on April 15 featuring several of its commentators, including Glenn Beck (see March 3, 2009), Sean Hannity, Neil Cavuto, and Greta Van Susteren, live at different venues. Many of the protest organizers’ Web sites feature one or more of the Fox commentators as part of their promotion efforts (see October 13, 2009). Beck is one of several Fox commentators and hosts who claims that the protests are “grassroots” organizations “spontaneously” led by “ordinary people,” but in reality, the protests are being orchestrated by two lobbyist-run and lobbyist-organized organizations, Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works. According to progressive news site Think Progress, “[t]he two groups are heavily staffed and well funded, and are providing all the logistical and public relations work necessary for planning coast-to-coast protests.” Freedom Works staffers are coordinating conference calls among protesters and working with conservative organizers to give them what it calls “sign ideas, sample press releases, and a map of events around the country” as well as guides featuring talking points and instructions on delivering a “clear message” to the public and the media. Freedom Works has set up numerous Web sites, some of which Think Progress claims are deliberately constructed to appear as the work of amateurs, to promote the protests. In Florida, Freedom Works took over the planning of events. Americans for Progress is writing press releases and planning events in New Jersey, Arizona, New Hampshire, Missouri, Kansas, and several other states. Think Progress calls these activities “corporate ‘astroturfing,’” which it defines as corporations’ attempts to orchestrate events appearing to be grassroots, citizen-led actions. Freedom Works is headed by former Texas Republican Representative Dick Armey, who is a lobbyist for the firm DLA Piper; Americans for Prosperity is headed by Tim Phillips, who is a former partner of right-wing activist Ralph Reed in the lobbying firm Century Strategies. Americans for Prosperity has organized numerous pro-oil company “grassroots” events. [Think Progress, 4/8/2009; Media Matters, 4/8/2009; Think Progress, 4/9/2009]

Retired Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney appears on Fox News to discuss piracy off the coast of Somalia. During the discussion, McInerney offers a plug for the F-22 Raptor fighter plane currently facing defunding (see March 17, 2009). McInerney says: “I’d put F-22s and combat air patrol out there, two of them, with tankers.… The reason I’d put the F-22s is because they can go 1.6 to Mach 2, and they have a very quick reaction time and a 20 millimeter cannon.” Neither McInerney nor Fox News informs their viewers that McInerney is a former consultant to Northrop Grumman, the defense contractor who builds the F-22. [Think Progress, 4/9/2009] The day after McInerney’s appearance, reporter Ryan Tate observes that McInerney has been involved in previous instances of promoting defense contractors’ interests on television news shows (see Early 2002 and Beyond, April 19, 2003, April 14-16, 2006, Late 2006, and Late April, 2008). Of the F-22, Tate writes: “He neglected to mention virtually every US fighter made in the last 30 years carries such a cannon (usually the six-barrel M-61 Vulcan), including the F/A-18 Hornet already in use by the US Navy.… He also fails to mention that, no matter how fast the F-22 might be, it can’t be based off an aircraft carrier. So its reaction time could never be as good (from a land base on, say, the Arabian Peninsula) as a Hornet or other existing Navy jet floating in the waters nearest the pirates. Finally, McInerney fails to mention that, though capable of ground attack, the F-22 is optimized for air-to-air operations, i.e., shooting down other fighters.” [Gawker, 4/9/2009]

Former Republican senator Rick Santorum writes in an op-ed for the Philadelphia Inquirer that President Obama is “contemptuous of American values.” Santorum, now a columnist for the Inquirer, ties his comments to the pending nomination of Harold Koh to become the State Department’s lead counsel. Santorum and other far-right conservatives oppose Koh, a former Yale Law School dean, because of his “internationalist” views. Obama’s nomination of Koh for the State Department, and Obama’s recent supposed “apology for American arrogance” to European audiences, “helped convince me that [Obama] has a deep-seated antipathy toward American values and traditions,” Santorum writes. Santorum opposes Koh’s view that the US must become part of the international legal community, and instead insists that the US hold itself apart from international law, a position Santorum shares with the former Bush administration. “Koh’s ‘transnationalism’ stands in contrast to good, old-fashioned notions of national sovereignty, in which our Constitution is the highest law of the land,” Santorum writes. “In the traditional view, controversial matters, whatever they may be, are subject to democratic debate here. They should be resolved by the American people and their representatives, not ‘internationalized.’ What Holland or Belgium or Kenya or any other nation or coalition of nations thinks has no bearing on our exercise of executive, legislative, or judicial power. Koh disagrees. He would decide such matters based on the views of other countries or transnational organizations—or, rather, those entities’ elites.” Koh supports the International Criminal Court, which Santorum views as an objectionable intrusion upon American sovereignty. [Philadelphia Inquirer, 4/9/2009] Santorum is echoing recent arguments by Fox News host Glenn Beck (see April 1, 2009) and Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid (see April 6, 2009).

Spencer Bachus. [Source: Chicago Tribune]US Representative Spencer Bachus (R-AL) tells a group of local leaders in Trussville, Alabama, “Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists.” Asked to clarify his comment, Bachus tells a reporter that 17 members of the House of Representatives are socialists. [Birmingham News, 4/9/2009; Hill, 4/9/2009]Only Names One of 17 - When pressed, Bachus only names one of his “socialists”—Representative Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has repeatedly recommended that the US adopt a program of “democratic socialism” similar to some practiced in Scandinavian countries. He refuses to name the other 16. Sanders asks rhetorically: “Has Spencer released his list yet? Everybody’s waiting with bated breath.” He adds, “I think at the very least he has to tell people what his definition of socialism is—and I think, yeah, he should tell us who he was referring to, who’s on the list.” Possible Reference to Congressional Progressive Caucus - Many Congressional staffers and advisers believe that Bachus is referring to some members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a left-leaning coalition of 77 House members founded by Sanders in the early 1990s. Although the caucus has not espoused socialism in any form, it does advocate reduced military spending, universal health care, and higher taxes on the rich. Right-wing groups have long labeled the caucus’s agenda as “fringe-left socialism”; one hard-right pundit, WorldNetDaily’s Joseph Farah, has called the caucus “Congress’s very own Red Army… marching the nation inevitably toward its self-proclaimed socialist ideal.” Differing Definitions - Politico’s Glenn Thrush writes that the term “socialism” has different meanings for different people. “To many on the left, it’s a relatively benign—if outdated—term, representing an activist, interventionist government that prioritizes economic security over the unfettered freedom of the marketplace. To many on the right, it’s practically an epithet—suggesting a return to Soviet-style Communism or a leap toward a hyper-regulated European brand of capitalism that stifles innovation and hikes taxes. It’s safe to say that more people in Bachus’s suburban Birmingham district—the most GOP-tilting seat in the country, according to the Cook Political Report—view socialism as a bad, bad thing.” Mixed Reactions - Doug Thornell, speaking for Representative Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), says of Bachus’s accusation: “House Republicans’ solution to the current economic crisis is to launch head-scratching, ‘50s-style accusations against unidentified members of Congress. Next thing you know they’ll be going after beatniks and calling for the auto industry to bring back the Edsel.… With all the challenges we face, it’s stunning this is what Republicans are talking about. They sound like a broken record of GOP low points from the 2008 campaign.” Erin Kanoy of the Heritage Foundation is glad Bachus “called out” his colleagues, saying: “I think that people expressing where they see someone on the political spectrum has tended to be an off-limits thing and very politically incorrect—but sometimes I think you’ve got to call a spade a spade. If Bachus believes members of Congress are part of this movement, he should be able to say it.… He’s really reflecting a much larger frustration with the landslide of legislation that we’ve had coming at us that seems to be marching towards socialist government.” Conservative activist Grover Norquist agrees with Bachus’s position, but says he should not have gotten into the subject of lists. “We shouldn’t get into a labeling thing with the other side,” Norquist says. “We shouldn’t call them socialists—we should call them stupid because they are spending all this money we don’t have.” Sanders notes that conservatives tried to tar Barack Obama with similar accusations: “They said a lot of this stuff about Obama during the [presidential] campaign, calling him a socialist, and trying to instill fear in people” (see August 1, 2008 and After, October 10, 2008, October 27, 2008, and March 5, 2009). Many progressive and liberal bloggers have accused Bachus of launching an attack on Democrats worthy of the McCarthyite “Red scare” of the 1950s. [Washington Post, 4/10/2009; Politico, 4/14/2009]Defending Socialism, Decrying 'Scare Tactics' - In an op-ed for the Huffington Post, Sanders writes: “I doubt that there are any other socialists, let alone 17 more, in all of the Congress. I also respectfully doubt that Spencer Bachus understands much about democratic socialism.… At its worst, Washington is a place where name-calling partisan politics too often trumps policy.… [B]randing someone as a socialist has become the slur du jour by leading lights of the American right from Newt Gingrich to Rush Limbaugh. Some, like Mike Huckabee, intentionally blur the differences between socialism and communism, between democracy and totalitarianism. ‘Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff,’ Huckabee told last winter’s gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference. If we could get beyond such nonsense, I think this country could use a good debate about what goes on here compared to places with a long social-democratic tradition like Sweden, Norway, and Finland, where, by and large, the middle class has a far higher standard of living than we do.… [W]e should be prepared to study and learn from the successes of social democratic countries. Name-calling and scare tactics just won’t do.” [Huffington Post, 4/22/2009]

Johnny Lee Clary. [Source: Christian Family Churches of Australia (.com)]The Reverend Johnny Lee Clary, who describes himself as a former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who abandoned his allegiance to white supremacist ideology after converting to Christianity and now preaches against racism and white separatism, answers a number of questions about the Klan and related organizations on his Web site. The John Birch Society - According to Clary, the John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011) “is just a political version of the KKK, without the name of the KKK. They center on the political ideas of the Klan and are not as vocal in public on the ideas of the racial superiority, but they attract the same people and say the same things behind closed doors.… The John Birch Society is the Klan.… They are racist, and full of hate and are officially listed as a hate group with several civil rights organizations throughout the USA.” Tom Metzger, the founder and leader of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), is an active leader of a California chapter of the JBS, Clary writes, as are many other members of the Klan and various neo-Nazi and white supremacist militia groups. Clary explains why the Klan is openly racist and the JBS is not, stating: “The John Birch Society’s function is to recruit professional people into their ranks of anti-government conspiracy freaks, that would be too afraid to join an organization with the name of the KKK. They suck these people into their ranks and use the donations to further the cause of radical un-American fascist racist KKK activities. This is a ploy for the KKK to get funding to help spread their agenda.” In response to an email from a JBS member portraying his organization as “conservative,” Clary writes: “Please do not try to represent your organization as ‘conservative.’ You are not conservative, and are disowned by the Republican Party and are considered a disgrace to true conservatives everywhere. Ronald Reagan, the greatest conservative American ever, would have nothing to do with any of you. Neither will President Bush for that matter.” Positive Aspects of the Klan - While Clary repudiates the Klan’s racism, he says there are some “good” aspects to the organization: it “stands against abortion, homosexuality, and drug dealers. They are for prayer in the schools and the use of the Bible in the classroom. These are good things that would entice some people into joining the Klan, however, if someone joined because of these reasons they would soon see that the evil the Klan does is so sinister that it far outweighs the good. The Klan is guilty of bombings, murder, and hatred of their fellow man because of the shade of their skin.” Why the KKK Hates African-Americans - In response to a letter from an African-American student asking this question, Clary writes: “I believe that one of the reason’s the Klan hates African-Americans so much is because they look different [from whites]. By putting others down they make themselves feel superior. One who hates so much really does not like his or her own self. They know deep down inside that they are a loser in society and they are searching for some way to try to achieve some sort of superiority. You have to remember also that the majority of KKK members are what would be classified as ‘poor white trash.’ Very few Klan members come from upper middle class backgrounds or even middle class for that matter. They come from backgrounds that are poor and down trodden. Instead of doing something to better themselves they build up resentment until it turns into hatred. They blame the Jews, blacks, and others for their own failures in life and they are a product of a learned response. That is, they are taught to hate.… If the blacks were not around for Klansmen to hate, it would be the Jews and if they were not around it would be the Native American Indians and if not them then someone else. When no one else that appears to be different is around then they start hating and bickering with each other. Many of them are crying out for a separate ‘Aryan’ homeland. They scream for a place where people that believe like they do can all go and live and not have to be around other races. That could be a solution that would benefit everybody. Even if there were no other races around them, their hatred is so deeply imbedded within them that they would start hating each other and finally destroy one another.” [Johnny Lee Clary, 2007; Johnny Lee Clary, 4/13/2009]

Fox News’s flagship morning news broadcast, America’s Newsroom, repeatedly airs video clips promoting the upcoming “tea party” protests for April 15 (see April 8, 2009, April 15, 2009, April 15, 2009, and April 15, 2009). Host Bill Hemmer urges viewers to attend protests near them, and alerts them to “virtual tea parties” being hosted on Fox’s “non-partisan” Web site Fox Nation. One clip exhorts viewers to “say no to biased media and yes to fair play and free speech,” and then prompts them to “express your views, your values” at Fox Nation. Hemmer then tells viewers that commentators Glenn Beck (see April 15, 2009), Sean Hannity, Neil Cavuto, and Greta Van Susteren are reporting and helping host protests in four separate areas around the nation. “Can’t get to a tea party?” Hemmer asks. “Fox Nation hosts a ‘virtual tea party.’ You can check it out on the site.” During Hemmer’s pitch, Fox News airs a clip of a protest sign with “NO to socialism!” written across an American flag with a Soviet-style hammer and sickle in place of the 50 stars (see October 13, 2009). [Media Matters, 4/13/2009]

FreedomWorks logo. [Source: FreedomWorks]The progressive news and advocacy site Think Progress profiles FreedomWorks, a conservative lobbying firm that uses the practice of “astroturfing” to press its agenda home. FreedomWorks is one of the organizations behind the anti-tax “tea party” movement (see April 8, 2009). The organization denies that it is “astroturfing”—creating fake “citizens groups” that purport to be spontaneously organized grassroots organizations—and compares its work to that of liberal activism group MoveOn.org. However, Think Progress notes that MoveOn is a citizen-organized group, while FreedomWorks is headed by former Republican activists and corporate officials, and is funded by oil, energy, and tobacco companies. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and current Washington lobbyist (R-TX) leads FreedomWorks. [Think Progress, 4/14/2009]'Amateur-Looking' Astroturfing Sites - Last year, the Wall Street Journal exposed FreedomWorks’ use of “amateur-looking” Web sites for its “astroturf” groups to bolster their credibility as purported “citizen groups” pushing for corporate interests (see May 16, 2008). [Think Progress, 4/14/2009]Represented by PR Firm with GOP Links - FreedomWorks is represented by the Washington public relations firm Shirley & Banister Public Affairs. Shirley & Banister also represents conservative organizations such as the National Rifle Association, Citizens United, news outlet Human Events, and organizer Richard Viguerie’s direct-mail firm. (It also represents the Bradley Foundation, a conservative funding organization that in 2008 gave $25,000 to both FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity [AFP], gave FreedomWorks $75,000 in 2009, and is considering a grant request from AFP.) One of Shirley & Banister’s partners is Craig Shirley, a veteran Republican PR operative who helped develop the overtly racist 1988 “Willie Horton” political ad (see September 21 - October 4, 1988). Progressive MSNBC host Rachel Maddow tells her audience: “This is a perfect system for the Republican Party. It’s a constant feedback loop. The Republican Party activists stir up fear and anger on the Internet… Fearful, angry people go to town hall events and then Republican Party officials say they are just responding to that anger and they have no idea where it came from. It’s [a] perfect cycle. Rile them up with made-up stuff and then sympathize with them that are so riled.” [MSNBC, 8/14/2009; MSNBC, 8/17/2009]Led by Millionaires - Three of FreedomWorks’ most prominent senior officials are millionaires. Armey makes over $500,000 a year working for the organization, and lives in a Texas home valued at $1.7 million. FreedomWorks president Matthew Kibbe lives on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, in a home valued at $1.17 million. Board member Steve Forbes, the billionaire publisher of Forbes magazine, lives in a New Jersey home valued at $2.78 million, owns a chateau in France, and recently sold a private island in Fiji and a palace in Morocco. [Wall Street Journal, 5/16/2008]FreedomWorks Supports Armey's Lobbying Efforts - Armey’s lobbying firm, DLA Piper, represents pharmaceutical firms such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, medical device supplier SleepMed, health care provider Metropolitan Health Networks, and another pharmaceutical firm, Medicines Company. One member of FreedomWorks’s board of directors is Richard Stephenson, the founder and chairman of Cancer Treatment Centers of America. He is also the president of International Capital and Management Company, which runs a hospital consulting company. The president of FreedomWorks is Matt Kibbe, the former senior economist for the Republican National Committee and the former chief of staff for Representative Dan Miller (R-FL). FreedomWorks is organizing protests against health care reform that would cut into pharmaceutical firms’ profits. DLA Piper represents a number of life insurance firms; FreedomWorks has organized support for the deregulation of the insurance industry. DLA Piper represents not only several American oil firms, but also Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, prime minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), on energy related issues such as maintaining the close ties between the US and the UAE. US oil firms are deeply involved in the UAE’s oil industry. [Center for Responsive Politics, 2009; Think Progress, 4/14/2009; MSNBC, 8/12/2009] In August 2009, after reporting on FreedomWorks, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow will tell her audience: “Washington lobbyists and health care executives and former Republican Party officials have just as much a right to shout down the policy debate about health care reform as anyone else does. These folks have just as much a right to try to derail this entire process as anyone else does. But we have a right to know who they are and who is paying them for their efforts. These guys are pros. This is an industry. This is beltway politics being organized and played out in town halls across the country.” [MSNBC, 8/12/2009] DLA Piper has also received $830,000 this year, so far, from the pharmaceutical firm Medicines Company; the same firm paid DLA Piper $1.5 million in 2008. [MSNBC, 8/7/2009]FreedomWorks Lobbying on Behalf of DLA Piper? - In August 2009, Maddow will ask, “[W]hy are DLA Piper’s clients relevant?” She answers herself, “There appears to be some pretty good evidence that when you pay Dick Armey’s lobbying firm, DLA Piper, you get what Dick Armey’s grassroots organization FreedomWorks does.” In the first half of 2007, the American Council of Life Insurers paid DLA Piper $100,000 to lobby on its behalf. During that time span, FreedomWorks began lobbying Congress on a “grassroots” basis to deregulate the life insurance industry. Maddow will sarcastically ask: “And, of course, perhaps it is just mere coincidence that FreedomWorks happened to have a newfound, ideological, purist grassroots commitment to life insurance deregulation at the same time the American Council of Life Insurers hired Dick Armey’s lobbying firm. It could just be a coincidence. Could be, right?” In 2006, DLA Piper began lobbying for the Senado de Republica, the Mexican Senate, for the purpose of “enhancing US-Mexico relations.” At the same time, FreedomWorks began promoting itself as “one of the few organizations willing to aggressively promote meaningful immigration reform.” In 2004, during the Bush administration’s push to privatize Social Security, a single mom from Iowa was introduced at a White House economic conference as a supporter of privatization. That mom was a FreedomWorks employee. Maddow will say: “This is how FreedomWorks does their work. They try to create the impression that their just regular grassroots Americans without any financial or political interests in the outcome of these policy fights.” [MSNBC, 8/12/2009]

The various “tea party” organizations around the nation (see After November 7, 2008, February 1, 2009, February 16-17, 2009, February 19, 2009, and February 19, 2009 and After) host rallies and protests throughout the day. The date has been chosen because April 15 is the day American citizens must submit individual income tax returns to the IRS; some tea party members say “tea” stands for “Taxed Enough Already?” The number of rallies is anywhere between 200 and 750, depending on who does the estimating; similarly, national attendance is later estimated at anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000. Some protests, such as the one in Atlanta, Georgia, draw thousands of participants and onlookers, whereas other rallies draw only a few people. A protest outside the White House is broken up by police when a demonstrator tosses a box of tea bags over the fence. This is the first time that a series of protests by tea party groups has been orchestrated on a national level. [Beth Rowen, 2/9/2010] Fox News provides nationwide coverage, both on the national cable news channel and for local affiliates, promotes and markets the rallies, and provides blogs and forums for scheduling, outreach, and coordination (see April 6-13, 2009, April 13-15, 2009, and April 15, 2009). The network promotes the rallies as “FNC [Fox News Channel] Tax Day Tea Parties.”

The Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive think tank and lobbying organization, releases a report that says the “tea party” movement protesting the various policies of the Obama administration (see April 8, 2009) is not, as purported, entirely a grassroots movement of ordinary citizens, but an “astroturf” movement created, organized, and funded by powerful conservative and industry firms and organizations. (CAP notes that the anti-tax “tea parties,” with “tea” standing for “Taxed Enough Already,” fail to note that President Obama’s recent legislation actually has cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans.) Two of the most prominent organizations behind the “tea parties” are FreedomWorks and Americans for Progress (AFP). FreedomWorks (see April 14, 2009) is a corporate lobbying firm run by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), and organized the first “tea party,” held in Tampa, Florida, on February 27. It then began planning and organizing “tea parties” on a national scale; officials coordinated logistics, called conservative activists, and provided activists with sign ideas and slogans and talking points to use during protests. AFP has coordinated with FreedomWorks. AFP is a corporate lobbying firm run by Tim Phillips, a former lobbying partner of conservative activist Ralph Reed, and funded in part by Koch Industries, the largest private oil corporation in America (see May 29, 2009). Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) is also involved, through his lobbying form American Solutions for Winning the Future, which is supported by oil companies. Support, Promotion from Fox News - On cable news channels, Fox News and Fox Business have run promotions for the “tea parties” in conjunction with enthusiastic reports promoting the affairs (see April 13-15, 2009, April 15, 2009, April 15, 2009, and April 6-13, 2009); in return, the organizers use the Fox broadcasts to promote the events. Fox hosts Glenn Beck, Neil Cavuto, and Sean Hannity all plan to broadcast live reports from the events. Fox also warns its viewers that the Obama administration may send “spies” to the events. (Fox justifies its depth of coverage by saying that it provided similar coverage for the 1995 Million Man March. However, Fox did not begin broadcasting until 1996—see October 7, 1996.) Republican Support - Congressional Republicans have embraced the “tea parties” as ways to oppose the Obama administration. Many leading Republicans, such as Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), Paul Ryan (R-WI), and some 35 others, will speak at AFP-funded “tea parties.” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has moved the RNC to officially support the protests. And Senator David Vitter (R-LA) has introduced legislation formally honoring April 15 as “National Tea Party Day.” “It’s going to be more directed at Obama,” says reporter and commentator Ana Marie Cox. “This is very much, I think, part of the midterm strategy” to win elections in 2010. Fringe Elements - According to CAP, many “fringe” elements of the conservative movement—including “gun rights militias, secessionists, radical anti-immigrant organizations, and neo-Nazi groups”—are involved in the “tea parties.” [Think Progress, 4/15/2009; Think Progress, 5/29/2009]

A ‘tea party’ protester carries a sign during a Chicago rally. [Source: Huffington Post]Fox News devotes much of its day’s coverage to the conservative, anti-tax “tea parties” taking place around the nation. The network has promoted the tea parties in the previous weeks (see April 6-13, 2009, April 15, 2009, and April 15, 2009). Fox hosts Glenn Beck, Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren all provide extensive live coverage from the sites of separate events, which the network promotes as “FNC [Fox News Channel] Tax Day Tea Parties” (see October 13, 2009). Many of the network’s shows, such as America’s Newsroom, Beck’s show, and others provide on-air and online information about the times and locations of events, and broadcast interviews with event organizers. Beck tells his viewers they can “[c]elebrate with Fox News” at any of four “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties.” Beck, who is at San Antonio’s Alamo for an event (see April 15, 2009) tells his audience: “If you can’t make the one in San Antonio, please go to the one with Neil or with Sean in Atlanta, that’s supposed to be great, Greta is in Washington, DC. Just get out and let your face be seen.” Hannity encourages viewers to send in their “Tax Day Tea Party” videos for on-air broadcast. Cavuto’s guest host in the studio, Stuart Varney, says plainly, “It’s now my great duty to promote the tea parties.” Fox News’s Web site, “Fox Nation,” actively promotes the events, with links to blogs, maps, videos, and event calendars. The network even hosts its own “virtual tea party” on its Web site. Fox host Gretchen Carlson suggests that viewers hang teabags from their cars’ rearview mirrors, “like fuzzy dice.” Fox Business anchor Cody Willard tells viewers to “figh[t] the fascism” of the current administration by attending a “tea party.” He asks his viewers, “Guys, when are we going to wake up and start fighting the fascism that seems to be permeating this country?” He adds that in his opinion, conservatives and liberals are “both fascists who are taking my money and building up corporate America with my welfare.” And Fox Business anchor David Asman advises his viewers to buy “tea party” merchandise. The push is successful: after the April 15 protests, many mainstream news outlets report that Fox News reports helped drive crowds to protests. CNN and Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz will say, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a news network throw its weight behind a protest like we are seeing in the past few weeks with Fox and these tea parties.” [Media Matters, 9/11/2009]

Fox News host Glenn Beck, broadcasting live from a “tea party” protest at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, interviews Joe Horn, who was charged with shooting to death two illegal immigrants whom Horn says he caught burglarizing his neighbor’s home. The Alamo is the site of the Republic of Texas’s 1836 stand against the Mexican Army, and apparently Beck’s interview of Horn is chosen to symbolize American “resistance” to Mexican immigrants. “It’s a different world in Texas,” Beck says, and Horn replies, backed by cheers from a small audience behind Beck, “Thank God for it.” Regarding the shooting, Horn says, “I thought it was the right thing to do, and I did it.” As Beck retells the story, Horn saw the two men burglarizing the neighbor’s home, called 911, and, before the police could respond, told the 911 operator that he was going to the home to “stop them.” Defying the operator’s request not to confront the two, Horn took his shotgun to the neighbor’s home and shot both intruders, killing them. (His admission of shooting them triggers wild cheering; the Fox News cameras focus on a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag waved from the crowd.) Horn claims that the men were approaching him when he opened fire. The crowd cheers at Beck’s retelling of another story of a homeowner shooting an alleged burglar, and cheers at every subsequent mention of guns and shootings. “Joe, what kind of world are we living in that people don’t understand you have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?” Beck asks. Horn says he had no intention of “letting those two men kill me,” even though police investigations showed that he shot both of them in the back, apparently as they were fleeing, and he told the 911 operator before leaving his home, “I’m going to kill them.” Neither one of the alleged burglars was armed. Texas prosecutors failed to indict Horn. [New York Times, 12/13/2007; Media Matters, 4/15/2009]

Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, interviewing Brent Bozell of the conservative media watchdog organization Media Research Center, lets slip an admission that her network provided public relations services to the “tea party” protests that took place yesterday (see April 15, 2009, April 15, 2009 and October 13, 2009). Kelly says: “You know, Brent, it’s been interesting because Fox News covered these tea parties, and we were one of the only organizations to give it any publicity or PR prior to the fact that it happened, and it was so under-covered by virtually every news organization. Why is that? Why was it so ignored up until the very last day by virtually everyone?” Talking Points Memo reporter Brian Beutler calls Kelly’s comment “a media version what some of us like to call a Kinsley gaffe”; such a “gaffe” is defined as an instance where a politician mistakenly tells the truth. [TPMDC, 4/16/2009] Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly notes: “Fox News is ostensibly a news outlet. Obviously, it’s not a legitimate journalistic enterprise, and equally obvious was the fact that it was doing ‘public relations’ work for the conservative rallies. But Megyn Kelly isn’t supposed to admit this on the air. As for the substance of her concerns about the legitimate news organizations, Kelly is no doubt convinced that there’s a nefarious media bias at play, but it’s at least possible major outlets didn’t have much pre-event coverage because there wasn’t that much, you know, news. Most mainstream outlets didn’t feel the need to do ‘p.r.’ work for enraged partisans in advance of their protests. That’s probably a good thing.” [Washington Monthly, 4/16/2009]

Fox News commentators mock the idea of using insects to torture prisoners, as was revealed in recently released Justice Department torture memos (see April 16, 2009). Mike Huckabee (R-AR), the former governor of Arkansas and a 2008 presidential candidate who now has his own talk show on Fox, says, “Look, I’ve been in some hotels where there were more bugs than these guys faced.” Huckabee goes on to characterize the Obama administration’s version of prisoner interrogation, saying, “We’re going to talk to them, we’re going to have a nice conversation, we’re going to invite them down for some tea and crumpets.” Huckabee’s fellow commentators Gretchen Carlson and Steve Doocy join in the hilarity. [Media Matters, 4/17/2009; Media Matters, 4/21/2009]

The Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), holds a series of hearings about health care reform, on April 21, May 5, and May 12. In all, 41 experts testify, but none of them advocate the so-called “single-payer” form of health care, a system which essentially has the government providing health care insurance instead of private insurers—“Medicare for all Americans,” as some characterize it. [Politico, 5/5/2009; Single Payer Action, 5/21/2009] The experts are from organizations like America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the health industry’s largest lobbying firm, and health insurers Blue Cross and Aetna. Some of the invited organizations employ former Baucus staff members. [Rolling Stone, 9/3/2009] Baucus says that single-payer is “off the table,” and will not be considered. [TPM Cafe, 5/5/2009]Health Industry Heavy Donors to Baucus - The nonpartisan organization Consumer Watchdog has reported that Baucus, one of the Senate’s most important architects of Congressional health reform, has accepted more campaign contributions from the health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations than any other current Democratic member of the House or Senate. During the last two election cycles, he received $183,750 from health insurance companies and $229,020 from drug companies. [Single Payer Action, 5/21/2009]Protesters Disrupt Hearings - Protesters disrupt the hearings by standing up and shouting criticisms of the committee over its failure to bring single-payer into the discussion. Eight protesters are led out of the hearing room and later arrested. At one point, Baucus asks for more police officers to enforce security. The protests are organized by Healthcare Now, Physicians for a National Health Program, and Single Payer Action, all of whom support a single-payer, government-run health care system. One protester calls the hearings nothing more than “political theater.” For his part, Baucus assures the audience, “I want you to know I care deeply about your views.” [Politico, 5/5/2009] The eight protesters spend around seven hours in jail. One, Dr. Margaret Flowers, later recalls: “It’s funny, the policemen were all telling us their horror stories about health care. One was telling us about his mother who was 62 and lost her job and was uninsured, waiting to get Medicare when she was 65.” The protesters are sentenced to six months’ probation. Baucus later admits that not allowing single-payer advocates to participate in the hearings was a mistake; he will eventually agree to meet with a group of those advocates (see June 3, 2009). Single-Payer Never Considered - In September, Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi will note that Baucus, like President Obama and other prominent Democrats, has supported single-payer insurance in theory, but asserts such a proposal would never get through Congress. Journalist Russell Mokhiber, who advocates for single-payer as a member of Single Payer Action, later says that the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats made an agreement with health industry leaders months before considering legislation for health care reform that single-payer would not be part of their proposals. In return, Mokhiber will say, they asked the industry not to oppose their reform efforts, a request that the industry has generally not honored. [Rolling Stone, 9/3/2009]

Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity displays his angry support for torture and waterboarding on his show, in response to the controversy over the recently released Senate report on torture (see April 21, 2009). Hannity says: “Barack Obama is so weakening our defenses in every regard, sucking up to all the world’s dictators, that people are gonna die because of what Barack Obama is doing right now. People are going to die.” When a guest objects that Americans may die because of the Bush administration’s torture policies, and that American torture policies are “spawning terrorists,” Hannity accuses her of “blam[ing] America” for terrorism, and begins shouting: “They [terrorists] are not Americans! They are at war with us!” He then raises a football over his head and says, “Imagine this is [9/11 plotter] Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s head.” He slams it on the table and shouts: “Dunk it in water so we can save American lives! You bet!” [Media Matters, 4/22/2009]

Fox News host Shepard Smith, clearly upset by the recent reports of torture (see April 16, 2009 and April 21, 2009), shouts his opposition to such practices during an interview with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller. On the air, Smith declares: “We are America, we don’t torture! And the moment that is not the case, I want off the train! This government is of, by, and for the people—that means it’s mine. That means—I’m not saying what is torture, and what is not torture, but I’m saying, whatever it is, you don’t do it for me! I want off the train when the government starts—I want off, next stop, now!” Smith is as impassioned during the commercial break. “They better not do it,” he says. “If we are going to be Ronald Reagan’s Shining City on the Hill, we don’t get to torture. We don’t do it.” And on Fox’s online broadcast The Strategy Show, Smith allows profanity to emphasize his objection. Slamming his hand on a table, he shouts: “We are America! I don’t give a rat’s _ss if it helps. We are America! We do not f_cking torture!!” [Huffington Post, 4/22/2009] In recent broadcasts, Fox contributors have either mocked the idea of torture (see April 17, 2009) or supported it outright (see April 20, 2009 and April 22, 2009).

Chyron displayed during Fox News broadcast touting Republican ‘watchdog’ efforts on Democratic spending. [Source: Media Matters]Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer tells his viewers that Fox is “keeping up” with four “interesting” projects reportedly funded by the economic stimulus act. Hemmer says that the research on the projects was done by Fox News itself. He does not tell viewers that the research, and the text and graphics displayed on-screen during his report, come directly from the Web site of Eric Cantor (R-VA), the Republican House Minority Whip. Cantor’s site lists 12 so-called “wasteful spending” projects funded by the recovery act. The four cited by Hemmer are from a section of Cantor’s site called “Washington Watch Report,” which calls itself “your one stop shop to learn about examples of government waste that have been uncovered by House Republicans.” The four projects include a skate park in Pawtucket, Rhode Island; an “art walk” in Rochester, New York; funding for a homeless project in Union, New York; and a transportation study in Ohio. Hemmer and guest Representative Mike Pence (R-IN) list each project and then criticize it. During the segment, Pence twice promotes Cantor’s Web site, and concludes by saying: “I commend you all. I commend my colleagues and the Republicans’ whip’s office with the Washington Watch Web site. People can go online and read more of these—we’re finding more everyday.” During Pence’s concluding statement, Fox News displays a “chyron” at the bottom of the screen that reads, “GOP Watchdog Exposes Wasteful State Spending of Gov’t Money” (see October 13, 2009). [Media Matters, 4/23/2009]

Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, a former federal judge and a guest on Fox News host Glenn Beck’s broadcast, says: “How about floating a constitutional amendment amongst the states? Let’s rescind the 16th Amendment. That’s the income tax. If 25, 30 states start thinking about it and talking about it seriously, the Congress will take note because they will be scared to death it will starve them out of existence. And they won’t be able to regulate progressively or retrogressively how we live.” [Media Matters, 9/7/2010] The 16th Amendment allows Congress to collect income taxes. It was passed by Congress and submitted to the states in 1909 and ratified in 1913, both under President William Howard Taft. Recently, far-right Republicans (see 1951-1967, 1970-1972, 1976-1978, Early 1980s, and 1985) and tea party activists have begun calling for its repeal, joined by some members of Congress (see April 28, 1999). [Media Matters, 9/7/2010; Legal Information Institute, 2011]

Fox News correspondent Molly Henneberg, during a broadcast of Fox’s “straight news” show America’s Newsroom, repeats the false claim made by religious groups that the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (LLEHCPA) would allow individuals or groups to “be prosecuted for their religious beliefs.” Some conservative religious groups have claimed that, under the proposed legislation, they could be, in Henneberg’s words, “prosecuted for their religious beliefs if they believe that homosexuality is a sin, that it could gag ministers who preach that, or even if a church may not want to marry a gay couple. There is concern that they could face lawsuits as well.” Henneberg fails to report that Section 8 of the bill says: “Nothing in this Act, or the amendments made by this Act, shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by the Constitution,” and the First Amendment to the Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The House Judiciary Committee’s report on the bill clearly states, “Nothing in this legislation would prohibit the constitutionally protected expression of one’s religious beliefs.” Henneberg does not report the committee’s finding. Later in the broadcast, anchor Bill Hemmer notes that supporters claim “there’s nothing in this law that will stymie the free expression of any religion” (see October 13, 2009). [Media Matters, 4/29/2009]

Conservative columnist and political activist Jonathan Moseley writes an article for his blog US News and Views that asserts President Obama is, and always has been, a “closet Muslim.” This assertion has been made numerous times by conservative opponents of Obama, and has been thoroughly debunked (see October 1, 2007, December 19, 2007, Before October 27, 2008, January 11, 2008, Around March 19, 2008, and April 18, 2008). Moseley accuses the national news media of “acting as the palace guard for ‘Dear Leader’ Barack Obama” and refusing to report what he calls “the truth” of Obama’s “secret Muslim” beliefs. Apparently, Moseley’s primary evidence is a February 2007 interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, where Obama recited the Muslim call to prayer and called it “one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset.” Moseley calls the Muslim call to prayer “screeching,” and says no one who listened to it would believe it to be beautiful “without enormous indoctrination into Islam.” Obama says he learned the call to prayer as a child, when he attended school in Indonesia. According to Moseley, the recitation of the call to prayer “makes one a Muslim. The words express a Muslim’s complete acceptance of, and total commitment to, the message of Islam.… Having attended Islamic religion classes, Obama knows this.” Moseley also cites as “evidence” a false claim that in April 2009, Obama demanded that “Georgetown University cover up the name of Jesus in a campus hall before” he would give a speech there. And, he says, at a recent economic summit, Obama “bowed reverently to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah,” but did not bow to Queen Elizabeth of England; Mosely writes that “a Muslim would instinctively give reverence to” the king of Saudi Arabia, but would not bow to the Queen of England, who, he writes, “is technically the head of the Church of England. Obama did not bow to the royal queen who is guardian of the world’s first and oldest Protestant Christian Church.” Moseley incorrectly calls Queen Elizabeth a “head of state” equal to the king of Saudi Arabia; in reality, Elizabeth is queen in title only, with the real head of the British government being the prime minister. Moseley states falsely that Obama “was raised as a Muslim,” citing the fact that his biological father was Muslim as well as his stepfather Lolo Soetoro (see October 28, 2008), and falsely states that Obama’s stepfather enrolled him in school under the name “Barry Soetoro” (see June 27, 2008, August 21-24, 2008, and Shortly Before June 28, 2010). Moseley even claims: “Since Obama changed his name back from Barry Sotero [an alternate spelling of ‘Soetoro’], he could have legally removed [his middle name] ‘Hussein’ in the process had he wished to. He did not.” This, Moseley claims, is further proof of Obama’s Muslim status. Moseley says that Obama has been masquerading as a Christian for over 20 years, ever since his “profess[ed]” conversion to Christianity at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago (see January 6-11, 2008), but dismisses Trinity United as “little more than a left-wing political club” and not a real church. And, Moseley says, Obama incorrectly claimed he had been to “57 states” on the presidential campaign trail, and cites this as evidence of Obama’s “closet Muslim” status, noting that there are 57 “states” in the Organization of Islamic Conference. “So the number of Islamic OIC states appears to have sprung more readily to Obama’s mind than the 50 states of the USA,” he writes. [Jonathan Moseley, 4/29/2009; The British Monarchy, 2011] Obama said after that statement that he had misstated both the number of states and the number of victims of a cyclone in Myanmar in that speech, and blamed fatigue for his misstatement; there are also less than 57 members in the OIC. [Snopes (.com), 7/1/2009] Moseley will later become a senior campaign aide to Christine O’Donnell (R-DE) in her unsuccessful bid for the Senate (see September 13, 2010); O’Donnell’s campaign will assert that Obama is a Muslim, and both O’Donnell and Moseley will assert that Obama, like other Democrats, is a secret Communist. [Mother Jones, 9/20/2010]

Marcus Epstein. [Source: Pensito Review]Marcus Epstein, a “nativist” leader with close ties to numerous racist and white supremacist organizations (see October 8, 2007 and January 31, 2009), pleads guilty to assaulting an African-American woman both physically and verbally. According to court documents, on the evening of July 7, 2007, an intoxicated Epstein was walking down a Washington, DC, street and making apparently random racial imprecations. When he saw the woman in question, he called her a “n_gger” and “delivered a karate chop” to her head. He was briefly detained by the woman’s husband but managed to break away and flee. Within minutes Epstein was taken into custody by a Secret Service officer who witnessed the incident. Epstein pleads guilty to simple assault. He faces a maximum punishment of 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. He is bound by a restraining order to stay away from the couple, has agreed to seek mental health treatment, complete an alcohol treatment program, write an apology to the victim, and donate $1,000 to the United Negro College Fund. Epstein consistently denies being a racist, though he writes for the overtly racist VDare.com Web site, attends racist conferences, and heads a discussion group, the Robert A. Taft Club, that regularly hosts racists as guest speakers. Epstein, who is of Korean and Jewish ancestry, has become something of a “star” in some conservative circles, particularly among groups interested in hindering or stopping immigration into America. Epstein is executive director of The American Cause, a white nationalist group headed by MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan. He also serves as executive director of Team America PAC, a political action committee run by Buchanan’s sister Bay Buchanan and founded by former Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO), an outspoken opponent of immigration. He is a leader of Youth for Western Civilization (YWC), a group dedicated to launching a right-wing youth movement at university campuses around the nation, and which was prominently featured at February’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Some of Epstein’s colleagues do not denounce him for his crime. Bay Buchanan merely calls the incident “out of character” for Epstein and explains that he was struggling with personal issues at the time of the assault. She adds, however, that he will soon be leaving Team America PAC. Tancredo dismisses the incident entirely, blaming the news coverage on the fact that a Hispanic, Sonia Sotomayor, has been nominated to the Supreme Court (see May 28, 2009). [Southern Poverty Law Center, 10/8/2007; One People's Project, 5/19/2009; Denver Post, 6/2/2009; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/3/2009] On his Web site, Epstein will claim that he has been admitted to the University of Virginia School of Law for the fall 2009 term, and thusly “will more or less suspend my political activities.” However, the law school will deny admitting Epstein, and will write that it does “not expect him to be an enrolled student in the future.” [DC Indymedia, 5/27/2009]

From left to right: Brandon Piekarsky, Colin Walsh, and Derrick Donchak. [Source: Moral Low Ground (.com)]Two Pennsylvania teenagers who beat an illegal immigrant to death (see July 12, 2008 and After) are found not guilty of the major crimes they were alleged to have committed. The all-white jury in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, finds Brandon Piekarsky and Derrick Donchak guilty of simple assault against Luis Ramirez. Piekarsky is found innocent of third-degree murder; both are found innocent of ethnic intimidation. Friends and relatives of the two teenagers have to be restrained by court officers when they attempt to rush the defense table to congratulate the two defendants. Gladys Limon, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, calls the jury’s verdicts “a complete failure of justice.” She adds, “It’s just outrageous and very difficult to understand how any juror could have had reasonable doubt.” Piekarsky and Donchak may face federal charges over the murder of Ramirez. Prosecutors said they were two of a group of four drunken teenagers who targeted Ramirez because of his race, and beat him to death while screaming racial epithets. Piekarsky delivered the fatal blow, a kick to the head. Ramirez died of the injury two days later. Defense lawyers called Ramirez the aggressor, and called the incident a street brawl that ended badly. Jury foreman Eric Macklin says the evidence led them to acquit Piekarsky and Donchak of all but the most minor charges. “I feel bad for Luis’s friends and family,” Macklin says. “I know they feel they haven’t gotten justice.” Neither Piekarsky nor Donchak will serve more than two years in prison. Another assailant, Colin Walsh, who actually knocked Ramirez unconscious before Piekarsky began stomping him, pled guilty to a charge of violating Ramirez’s civil rights, earning four years in prison; Walsh testified for the prosecution. A fourth assailant, Brian Scully, is charged in juvenile court with aggravated assault and ethnic intimidation (see May 18, 2009). [CNN, 5/2/2009; Associated Press, 5/4/2009; Philadelphia Weekly, 5/19/2009]Hispanic Residents Say Verdict Encourages More Racial Intimidation - Shenandoah residents say after the verdict that other white teenagers apparently feel empowered by the verdict, and have issued threats against other Hispanic residents. One, high school student Felix Bermejo, is told by a group of white males that he will be the next one to be beaten to death. Residents who have spoken out against the murder are harassed and threatened. One white resident, who asks that her name not be used for fear of retaliation, tells a reporter: “It’s only gotten worse since the verdict. The whole thing has set us backwards, and if the trial had swung the other way, it would have just been the whites who were angry.” Some white residents say that the only racial tensions in Shenandoah are those sparked by the national media coverage, but some Hispanic residents say differently. Fermin Bermejo, the father of the threatened Felix Bermejo, tells a reporter, “This town is a place where people can be very kind, but there are also a lot of folks who don’t like change and they don’t like people who are different, and they make sure you know it.” The Bermejos are American citizens. Fermin Bermejo says he has tried repeatedly to get school authorities to intervene in what he calls the bullying of his son; instead, his son has been suspended for standing up to the white youths. “All we were asking the principal to do is talk to the bullies and tell them that if the accusations were true, they would be in serious trouble,” Bermejo says. Other Hispanic residents tell of being targeted by ethnic slurs and criticized for speaking Spanish in public. One Hispanic shopkeeper says his store’s front window was shattered by vandals after the verdict. [New York Times, 5/16/2009]Federal Investigation Mounted - After the verdict, Governor Ed Rendell (D-PA) calls the verdict racially motivated, and calls for a Justice Department investigation. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Rendell writes: “The evidence suggests that Mr. Ramirez was targeted, beaten, and killed because he was Mexican. Such lawlessness and violence hurts not only the victim of the attack, but also our towns and communities that are torn apart by such bigotry and intolerance.” After an FBI investigation, federal charges will be filed against Piekarsky, Donchak, and three local police officers (see December 15, 2009). [CNN, 12/15/2009]

New Republic legal correspondent Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University, writes an analysis of appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor, considered by many to be a leading candidate to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. Rose from Poverty to Consideration for High Court - Rosen gives a brief biographical sketch of Sotomayor, whom he labels as a “compelling” candidate both for her legal accomplishments and her life story. Sotomayor is the daughter of poor Puerto Rican immigrants, grew up in the South Bronx, and graduated with high academic honors from Princeton and Yale. She has served as a prosecutor, a corporate litigator, and a judge. If nominated and confirmed, Sotomayor would be the Court’s first Hispanic member and only its third female member. She has the support of both New York senators, Democrats Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. Conflicting Opinions Largely from Anonymous Sources - Rosen notes that her former clerks praise her as “demanding but thoughtful” and “commit[ted] to legal fairness,” a “rule-bound pragmatist—very geared toward determining what the right answer is and what the law dictates, but her general approach is, unsurprisingly, influenced by her unique background.” Rosen quotes several anonymous sources—“nearly all… former law clerks… or former federal prosecutors in New York”—who, he says, question “her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices, as well as a clear liberal alternative.” According to one former law clerk, Sotomayor is “not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench,” egotistical, and “domineering.” In contrast, one of his named sources, fellow Second Circuit appeals court judge Jose Cabranes, said of her, “She is not intimidated or overwhelmed by the eminence or power or prestige of any party, or indeed of the media.” Anonymous sources tell Rosen that Sotomayor is more apt to quibble with a colleague’s grammar and syntax rather than the focus of their legal arguments. Another former clerk praises Sotomayor for being tough-minded and “impressive.” Rosen admits that he has not read enough of Sotomayor’s opinions “to have a confident sense of them,” nor has he “talked to enough of Sotomayor’s detractors and supporters, to get a fully balanced picture of her strengths. It’s possible that the former clerks and former prosecutors I talked to have an incomplete picture of her abilities. But they’re not motivated by sour grapes or by ideological disagreement—they’d like the most intellectually powerful and politically effective liberal justice possible. And they think that Sotomayor, although personally and professionally impressive, may not meet that demanding standard.” Rosen concludes that President Obama would be taking an unnecessary “gamble” by nominating her to the high court. [New Republic, 5/4/2009]Repercussions of Analysis - Rosen’s column triggers several demeaning characterizations of Sotomayor in the conservative press (see May 4, 2009 and May 5, 2009), characterizations that will intensify when she is nominated for the Court (see May 26, 2009). His use of anonymous sources to base his negative coverage will be repudiated by a number of critics (see May 5, 2009).

Columnist Marc Ambinder joins in the wave of conservative criticism against prospective Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 4, 2009) triggered by an analysis in the New Republic (see May 4, 2009). Ambinder warns the Obama administration not to choose Sotomayor simply because some liberals and Hispanics want her on the bench, calls her “solid if unspectacular,” and writes, “And the respectable intellectual center… is beginning to have doubts.” Ambinder does not note who, exactly, makes up the “intellectual center” he cites. [Atlantic Monthly, 5/5/2009] Nation columnist Chris Hayes retorts: “One gossipy article from Jeff Rosen means ‘the respectable intellectual center… is beginning to have doubts.’ Really?” [Salon, 5/5/2009] Less than a month later, Sotomayor will be nominated to the Court (see May 26, 2009).

Atlantic columnist Ta-Nehisi Coates lambasts law professor Jeffrey Rosen for his recent analysis of prospective Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 4, 2009). Citing Rosen’s line, “I haven’t read enough of Sotomayor’s opinions to have a confident sense of them, nor have I talked to enough of Sotomayor’s detractors and supporters, to get a fully balanced picture of her strengths,” Coates responds: “Rosen is attacking Sotomayor’s ability to do the necessary intellectual heavy-lifting, while explicitly neglecting to do any of his own. In this instance, his piece reads like a burglar’s brief against rampant criminality. Authored mid-robbery, no less.” She also slams her Atlantic colleague Marc Ambinder’s criticisms of Sotomayor (see May 5, 2009), noting, “You don’t get to be the ‘respectable intellectual center’ and then practice your craft in the gossip-laden, ignorant muck.” [Atlantic Monthly, 5/5/2009] Former civil litigator Glenn Greenwald joins Coates in criticizing the early attacks on Sotomayor. Greenwald calls Rosen’s reliance on anonymous sources to attack Sotomayor’s character and professional conduct “shoddy, irresponsible, and… intellectually irresponsible,” and cites several instances where Rosen’s reporting has been countered by sources willing to go on the record. Greenwald writes of his amazement at how quickly Sotomayor has been “transformed in conventional wisdom, largely as a result of Rosen’s piece, into a stupid, shrill, out-of-her-depth Puerto Rican woman who is being considered for the Supreme Court solely due to anti-merit, affirmative action reasons.” Greenwald writes that he twice faced Sotomayor in court, and found her “extremely perceptive, smart, shrewd, and intellectually insightful.” She could be forceful, “at times unpleasantly so,” he recalls, and remembers being dressed down by her for a “substantial procedural mistake” he committed, but notes that such behavior by judges “is the opposite of uncommon.” Greenwald writes that behavior usually characterized as “tough,” “forceful,” and “authoritative” by white males is often reworked into characterizations of “domineering” and “egotistical” when the same behaviors are exhibited by women. Greenwald also notes that Rosen was one of the strongest media voices in favor of the nomination of conservative jurist John Roberts (see September 29, 2005) to the Court. [Salon, 5/5/2009] Less than a month later, Sotomayor will be nominated to the Court (see May 26, 2009).

Fox News chyron accusing Democrats of voting to protect pedophiles but not veterans. [Source: Media Matters]Several Fox News anchors and commentators, along with the Fox News Web site, falsely claim that House Democrats tried to “protect” or “defend” pedophiles by voting against an amendment to the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (LLEHCPA). The legislation defines as a federal crime specific acts of violence or attempted violence “because of the actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person.” The amendment, advanced by Representative Steve King (R-IA), stated that “the term ‘sexual orientation’ shall not include pedophilia.” Representative Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) noted that federal statutes already exclude pedophilia from the definition of “sexual orientation,” and called King’s amendment “unnecessary and… inflammatory in terms of insinuations.” Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer, commentator Sean Hannity, and Fox Nation now characterize the Democrats’ successful opposition to King’s amendment as an attempt to “protect” or “defend” pedophiles. All three claim that Democrats defended pedophiles while refusing to defend veterans. Hannity: 'Special Category for Pedophiles' - Hannity tells his viewers, “Democrats just voted to extend special legal protections to pedophiles.” He also falsely claims that the Democrats inserted a “special category for pedophiles” in the legislation. Interviewing King, Hannity says: “I want to be perfectly clear. So hate—we have a hate crimes bill, and you’re saying, all right, we should exempt pedophiles. Every Democrat says no.” King calls Hannity’s characterization “absolutely right,” and says that “on the top of that, the amendment that I offered to exempt pedophiles from a special protected status was after Tammy Baldwin, one of the lead sponsors on the bill, had argued that the sexual orientation, special protective status in the bill, only covered heterosexuals and homosexuals, so that doesn’t include a pedophile. But she opposed the amendment anyway, as did all the Democrats, as you just showed tonight.” Later, Hannity asks King, “Is it safe to say that Democrats were willing to protect pedophiles?” and King replies: “Sean, it is a matter of Congressional record. Absolutely true—beyond any doubt whatsoever.” Hannity and King then claim that Democrats refused to support another section that would create “special protection” for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. King calls the Democrats’ actions furtherance of the “agenda… of the homosexual activists.” Hemmer: Protecting Pedophiles, Not Veterans - Fox’s “non-partisan” newscast, America’s Newsroom, runs an on-screen “chyron” that claims, “House Dems vote to protect pedophiles, but not veterans.” Anchor Bill Hemmer tells viewers that Democrats “voted to give special protection to pedophiles” (see October 13, 2009). Fox Nation: Defending Pedophiles over Veterans - Fox Nation, which claims to be free of bias, runs a headline saying, “House Democrats Defend Pedophiles Over Veterans.” [Media Matters, 5/6/2009]

Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, a former federal judge and a guest on Fox News host Glenn Beck’s broadcast, advocates repealing the 16th Amendment, something he has done previously on Beck’s show (see April 28, 2009). Beck asks about “this solution that you and I have talked about on a constitutional amendment, or a threat of a constitutional amendment.” Napolitano replies: “If two-thirds of the states ask the Congress to call a constitutional convention to consider the adoption of this amendment, which I’ll describe in a moment, as it gets closer and closer to the two-thirds necessary and Congress would be required to call the convention, you’ll see some reaction on the part of Congress to attempt to placate the states that want to call this. Now, the constitutional amendment is a simple one. It simply abolishes the 16th Amendment and states affirmatively that Congress shall have no power to tax the personal incomes of individual persons. If that were enacted, it would starve the federal government back into the original footprint that the founders intended for it. But as it gets closer to enactment, Congress will have to do something for fear that it might be enacted.” [Glenn Beck, 5/6/2009; Media Matters, 9/7/2010] The 16th Amendment allows Congress to collect income taxes. It was passed by Congress and submitted to the states in 1909 and ratified in 1913, both under President William Howard Taft. Recently, far-right Republicans (see 1951-1967, 1970-1972, 1976-1978, Early 1980s, and 1985) and tea party activists have begun calling for its repeal, joined by some members of Congress (see April 28, 1999). [Media Matters, 9/7/2010; Legal Information Institute, 2011]

A photo from Glenn Beck’s ‘The Civilest War’ broadcast on Fox News. Beck is at far left. [Source: Fox News]Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck writes an article for Fox News promoting his upcoming special program The Civilest War, which he says is an expose of the “tyranny” of the Federal Reserve over the American economy. Beck compares the program to the popular science fiction movie The Matrix, explaining that in the movie: “Nothing was real, the world people lived in was a fabrication—a computer program. Our lives have been like that movie and it is not about Barack Obama. It’s about Obama and [George W.] Bush and [Bill] Clinton and [George H. W.] Bush. It has been going on for years, it is just a play and it goes back to the progressive movement—on both sides of the aisle. In the movie the hero is offered two pills: red to learn the truth about the Matrix; blue to go on living blissfully ignorant to what is really going on. The way to take our country back will short-circuit the Matrix we are living in. And it has to do with gun rights, state’s rights, and what I call the civilest war. It is too much to get into now—but next week take the ‘red pill’ and get the truth.” The hour-long program begins with an adaptation of the famous poem by Martin Niemoller, rewritten by Beck as follows: “I think this is the problem. First they came for the banks. I wasn’t a banker, I didn’t really care. I didn’t stand up and say anything. Then they came for the AIG executives. Then they came for the car companies. Until it gets down to you. Most people don’t see—they are coming for you at some point! You’re on the list! Everybody’s on the list. You may not be rich—as currently defined.” The show features a Utah Republican legislator accusing the federal government of imposing “tyranny” on the citizenry, neo-Confederate historian Kevin Gutzman who gives a very different explanation of the meaning of “constitutional” liberties that would abolish suffrage for women and rights for minorities, and a Montana militia member, Gary Marbut, who concludes that the most sacred rights of the US citizen are to keep and bear arms. [Fox News, 5/2009; Fox News, 5/8/2009; Crooks and Liars, 5/15/2009] Author David Neiwert, an expert on right-wing extremism, notes that the ideas Beck is promoting in The Civilest War are identical to those promulgated by far-right “Patriot” and militia movements in the 1990s, including the idea of absolute “state sovereignty” (see 1983-1995). The ultimate idea behind Beck’s proposals, Neiwert writes, is the dissolution of the federal government and the transformation of the United States into 50 independent and disparate national entities. One of the earliest proponents of Beck’s ideas, Neiwert writes, was former Colorado state legislator Charles Duke (R-CO—see May 15-21, 1996), who still has deep ties to militia and anti-government organizations in the Western states. [Crooks and Liars, 5/15/2009; Crooks and Liars, 5/15/2009]

On his radio show, conservative host Glenn Beck warns that the Democrats’ “socialistic” health care reform proposal will lead to “eugenics” as envisioned by leaders of the Nazi Third Reich. Beck tells his listeners that the reform package will not only result in senior citizens being forced to die before their time in order to save on medical costs (see November 23, 2008, January 27, 2009, February 9, 2009, February 11, 2009, and February 18, 2009), but also says: “This is Nazi Germany stuff. This is the kind of stuff that is progressive in its nature. It is eugenics. It is survival of the fittest. It is the reason why the abortion argument makes so much difference. You can’t devalue life at either end because these people are waiting to swoop in and say it’s just not worth doing these things. Don’t waste the money on old people. They’re not going to live long anyway. Spend it on someone who meets the requirements of our cost-benefit analysis. So old people, thanks for all the contributions you made to society during your better years but now we’re sorry to say it’s time to send you to a better place, heaven.” [Glenn Beck, 5/13/2009]

Fox News’s Web site, Fox Nation, features a banner advertisement for May 14’s ‘Tea Party 2.0’ events. [Source: Media Matters]As it did with the April 15 “tea parties” (see April 15, 2009), Fox News actively promotes the May 14 anti-tax “tea party” protests scheduled to take place at venues around the country. The protests, dubbed “Tea Party 2.0,” are a major portion of Fox’s coverage before and during the May 14 events. On May 13, Fox News host Greta Van Susteren hosts one of the events’ highest-profile organizers, Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC), speaking on behalf of the Republican Governors Association (RGA), one of the hosts of the events. “If you wanted to go to a tea party on April 15 but could not make it or there was none in your hometown, tomorrow’s your big chance,” she says. She also asks Sanford if viewers can log on to a Web site for more information, and asks for a phone number for more information. During the interview, Fox News shows an on-screen text crawl that reads, “To sign up for Tea Party 2.0 go to: www.thegopcomeback.com” (see October 13, 2009). [Media Matters, 5/14/2009; Media Matters, 5/15/2009]

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), widely considered a likely candidate for the presidency in 2012, lambasts current Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for her recent complaints about the CIA never briefing her about the Bush administration’s use of torture. “I think she has lied to the House, and I think that the House has an absolute obligation to open an inquiry, and I hope there will be a resolution to investigate her. And I think this is a big deal. I don’t think the speaker of the House can lie to the country on national security matters,” Gingrich says. Gingrich then launches a personal attack (see September 20, 1990) on Pelosi, saying: “I think this is the most despicable, dishonest, and vicious political effort I’ve seen in my lifetime. She is a trivial politician, viciously using partisanship for the narrowist of purposes, and she dishonors the Congress by her behavior.… Speaker Pelosi’s the big loser, because she either comes across as incompetent or dishonest. Those are the only two defenses. The fact is she either didn’t do her job, or she did do her job and she’s now afraid to tell the truth.” [ABC News, 5/15/2009] Former Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, also says the CIA lied to him about the Bush administration’s use of torture. He says that the CIA’s records about its briefings of Graham and Pelosi conflict with his own records of his briefings by intelligence officials, and he has no recollection of ever being briefed about “any of the sensitive programs such as the waterboarding or other forms of excessive interrogation.” [Huffington Post, 5/14/2009]

One of the billboards erected by WorldNetDaily. [Source: WorldNetDaily]The conservative news blog WorldNetDaily (WND), which has been at the forefront of the “birther” movement challenging President Obama’s citizenship (see August 1, 2008 and After, October 21, 2008, October 24, 2008, November 12, 2008 and After, and December 5, 2008), begins erecting billboards asking “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WND, calls the billboard initiative “the truth and transparency campaign.” The first, a digital electronic billboard, is displayed along Highway 165 in Ball, Louisiana, and two more standard billboards are being prepared for display in Los Angeles and Pennsylvania. Farah says the “national [billboard] campaign is going to be big and long-lasting,” and uses WND to solicit donations for more billboards. Farah says he and the WND staff deliberately chose not to name Obama in the billboards: “There are several reasons we chose the message, ‘Where’s the birth certificate?’ There is only one birth certificate controversy in this country today—despite the near-total absence of this issue from coverage in the non-WND media. This is a grass-roots issue that resonates around the country, as our own online petition with nearly 400,000 signers suggests. In addition, I like the simplicity of the message. I like the fact that the message will cause some people to ask themselves or others about the meaning of the message. It will stir curiosity. It will create a buzz. I’m assuming when these billboards are springing up all over the country, it might even make some in the news media curious. And there’s one more factor that persuaded me this was the way to go. Come 2012, campaign laws will pose restrictions on political advertising mentioning the names of presidential candidates. This one clearly doesn’t. I would like to see the federal government make the case that this is somehow a political ad.” Farah blames “timid elected officials in Washington, corrupt judges around the country, and a news media that show a stunning lack of curiosity about the most basic facts of Obama’s background—especially how it relates to constitutional eligibility for the highest office in the land” for failing to investigate the “birther” controversy. Obama released his birth certificate in 2008 (see June 13, 2008), and since then it has been validated by multiple governmental and independent sources (see June 27, 2008, July 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008). Farah, however, is not convinced, and believes the birth certificate “controversy” is part of a larger, sinister scheme by the Obama administration: “As Obama transforms this country from self-governing constitutional republic to one governed by a central ruling elite, the simple fact remains that no controlling legal authority has established that he is indeed a ‘natural born citizen’ as the Constitution requires,” he says. “Obama’s promises of transparency have become a bad joke as he continues to hide simple, innocuous documents like his birth certificate and his student records.” Farah says WND is operating as an “independent watchdog on government” by launching the billboard campaign, and not acting as a partisan organization. “I wish such a campaign were not absolutely necessary,” he says. “I wish there were checks and balances in our political and electoral systems to ensure that constitutional eligibility of presidential candidates was established before politicians could assume the highest office in the land. I wish my colleagues in the news media believed the Constitution really means what it says and pressed this issue as hard as we have pressed it at WND. I wish radio talk show hosts were bold enough to ask this question. But wishing is not enough. It’s time to raise the visibility of this issue vital to the rule of law in America. I ask everyone to pitch in and help WND make a simple yet profound statement: The Constitution still matters.” [WorldNetDaily, 5/20/2009] In November 2010, WND will erect a “birth certificate” billboard along Highway 93 near Kingman, Arizona, the small town in which Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh planned the destruction of the Murrah Federal Building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Other billboards will be erected in Pennsylvania, Texas, Alabama, and Delaware. [WorldNetDaily, 11/8/2010]

Conservative groups run attack ads and public relations campaigns against three of President Obama’s prospective nominees to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, even though Obama has not yet named a replacement. The three being targeted for attack are Judge Diane Wood of the Seventh Court of Appeals, US Solicitor General Elena Kagan, and Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the Second Court of Appeals, who will eventually get the nod (see May 26, 2009). Progressive groups counter the attacks with their own ads and blog campaigns. Wood is targeted as too pro-abortion, Kagan has come under fire for not being supportive enough of the military, and in Sotomayor’s court, one ad says, “the content of your character is not as important as the color of your skin.” Tom Goldstein, who runs the influential SCOTUSblog, a non-partisan website focusing on Supreme Court issues, says: “I think that the Internet and blogs have been great in terms of being able to distribute information easily. The downside is that there is an equal leveling effect in which totally idiotic wing nuts can go off—that’s true on both the far left and far right.… So it contributes to good people being torn apart for no reason.” Gary Marx of the Judicial Confirmation Network, a conservative group that assembled the attack ads, says the spots are an attempt to properly “frame the issue.” Law professor Jonathan Adler says the ads are more about fundraising than any real attempt to derail whichever nominee Obama selects. “If you are a conservative group and you want more Republicans in the Senate, then you really harp on this issue.” Adler says the nomination process for Supreme Court choices has been locked in a “downward spiral” for more than 20 years. “I think we’re talking about the wrong things,” he says. “It can have negative effects on the judiciary. And it could steer people away from the court who are easy to demonize.” The ultimate result, he says, “is a worse judiciary and a tainted confirmation process.” Former Bush administration lawyer Bradford Berenson blames the Obama administration for the preemptive attacks, citing the White House’s choice to conduct what he calls a “lengthy, semipublic deliberation” over the nomination. That “virtually guarantees that the interest groups will mount attacks and exert both public and private pressure in an effort to influence the selection,” he says. “In some ways, that is the point of proceeding in this way—to get a feel for the strength and type of opposition particular candidates will face.” [Los Angeles Times, 5/21/2009]

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh attacks Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009), a Hispanic woman, and President Barack Obama, a half-African-American male, over their race, accusing them of racism. Limbaugh tells his listeners: “So, here you have a racist. You might want to soften that and you might wanna say a reverse racist. And the libs [liberals] of course say that minorities cannot be racists because they don’t have the power to implement their racism. Well, those days are gone because reverse racists certainly do have the power to implement their power. Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist and now he’s appointed one.” Limbaugh goes on to call Sotomayor a “party hack.” [Real Clear Politics, 5/26/2009; Politico, 5/27/2009; CNN, 5/27/2009]

New Republic columnist Jeffrey Rosen, stung by criticism of his recent article using anonymous sources questioning the character and reputation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 4, 2009, May 5, 2009, and May 26, 2009), attempts to backtrack from his original assertions. He writes, “Of course, Judge Sotomayor should be confirmed to the Supreme Court,” and continues: “In my view the strongest case to be made for Sotomayor is not her inspiring life story: [Supreme Court Justice] Clarence Thomas overcame similar personal obstacles, but far from giving him a sense of empathy, his background has created a sense of anger and ideological rigidity. Instead, the strongest case to be made for Sotomayor is the idea that the range of her experience—as a trial judge, appellate judge, and commercial litigator—might give her the humility to recognize that courts participate in a dialogue with the political branches when it comes to defining constitutional rights, rather than having the last word.… Conservatives are already citing my initial piece on Sotomayor as a basis for opposing her. This willfully misreads both my piece and the follow-up response. My concern was that she might not make the most effective liberal voice on the Court—not that she didn’t have the potential to be a fine justice. Questions of temperament are often overlooked, but history suggests that they are the most relevant in predicting judicial success. (Justice [Antonin] Scalia may be a brilliant bomb-thrower, but has failed in his attempts to build coalitions and bipartisan majorities.) Now is the time to think more broadly about the role Justice Sotomayor is likely to play on the Supreme Court, and I look forward to doing that in the weeks ahead.” [New Republic, 5/26/2009]

Former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, who authored numerous legally untenable memos authorizing torture and the preeminence of the executive branch (see September 21, 2001, September 25, 2001, September 25, 2001, October 23, 2001, November 6-10, 2001, and January 9, 2002), writes that in the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court (see May 26, 2009), “empathy has won out over excellence in the White House.” Yoo, who calls the Justice she is replacing, David Souter, an equally “weak force on the high court,” writes that President Obama “chose a judge distinguished from the other members of [his list of potential nominees] only by her race. Obama may say he wants to put someone on the Court with a rags-to-riches background, but locking in the political support of Hispanics must sit higher in his priorities.” Sotomayor’s record is “undistinguished,” Yoo writes, and “will not bring to the table the firepower that many liberal academics are asking for.” She will not be the intellectual and legal equal of conservatives Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, he says. “Liberals have missed their chance to put on the Court an intellectual leader who will bring about a progressive revolution in the law.” Conservatives should challenge her nomination, Yoo writes, because the Court is “a place where cases are decided by a faithful application of the Constitution, not personal politics, backgrounds, and feelings. Republican senators will have to conduct thorough questioning in the confirmation hearings to make sure that she will not be a results-oriented voter, voting her emotions and politics rather than the law.” [American Enterprise Institute, 5/26/2009]

Continuing the conservative lambasting of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009), columnist Michael Goldfarb attacks her as an advocate of “affirmative action” for Hispanics and writes, “[P]erhaps what’s most striking is that on the issue of diversity, Obama seems to have the views of a 21-year-old Hispanic girl—that is, only by having a black president, an Hispanic justice, a female secretary of state, and Bozo the Clown as vice president will the United States become a true ‘vanguard of societal ideas and changes.’” [Weekly Standard, 5/26/2009]

Tom Goldstein, a veteran lawyer who maintains the Supreme Court-focused, nonpartisan “SCOTUSblog,” writes that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) will be the focus of caricatures and character attacks from the right, just as Justices Samuel Alito (see October 31, 2005 - February 1, 2006) and John Roberts (see September 29, 2005) were from the left. Goldstein’s assessment is echoed by ABC’s “The Note,” an influential daily political newsletter. Goldstein, who has argued cases before the Court over 20 times, writes that barring some serious revelation of ethical violations, Sotomayor is almost guaranteed to be confirmed by the Senate, but before that, she will be subjected to attacks from what he calls “committed ideologues.” Few “mainstream Republican politicians will vocally join the criticism,” he predicts. In a political sense, it would be disastrous for Republicans to mount serious opposition to a Hispanic woman, or Latina. “To Hispanics, the nomination would be an absolutely historic landmark,” Goldstein writes. “It really is impossible to overstate its significance. The achievement of a lifetime appointment at the absolute highest levels of the government is a profound event for that community, which in turn is a vital electoral group now and in the future.” Such attacks would comprise “a strategy that risks exacting a very significant political cost among Hispanics and independent voters generally, assuming that the attacks aren’t backed up with considerable substance.” The attacks will come from any of four major areas, Goldstein predicts. [Tom Goldstein, 5/26/2009]Attacks Led by Conservatives outside Congress - ABC’s Jonathan Karl agrees. He writes: “At the start, Senate Republicans will likely make innocuous statements about the need to thoroughly review her record, but make no mistake, GOP leaders, with a big assist from outside conservative groups, will wage a vigorous campaign against this nomination.… Senate Republicans don’t expect to defeat the Sotomayor nomination. But they hope to raise enough questions about the nomination to make it a tough vote for Democratic senators in more conservative states. They will also use the confirmation battle as an opportunity to motivate a demoralized Republican base” (see May 1, 2009). [ABC News, 5/26/2009]Attacks on Sotomayor's Intellect - The first series of attacks, Goldstein writes, will focus on the claim that she “is not smart enough for the job.” He writes that this is a powerful line of argument with an equally strong potential for backlash, so it will be handled carefully and obliquely. Unfortunately for this position, he writes, “Sotomayor is in fact extremely intelligent.” She graduated at the top of her class at Princeton, and her judicial opinions “are thorough, well-reasoned, and clearly written. Nothing suggests she isn’t the match of the other Justices.” Goldstein’s predictions are reflected in a number of public columns and commentaries (see May 26, 2009, May 26, 2009, May 29, 2009, and May 31, 2009). 'Liberal Ideologue and Judicial Activist' - The second line of attack will be purely ideological, focusing on the claim that she is a “liberal ideologue” and a “judicial activist.” While Sotomayor would be on the left of the Court, Goldstein writes, she is hardly a radical liberal. She is very similar to the man she is slated to replace, Justice David Souter, as a moderate, centrist liberal. Her appellate opinions as reviewed by the Court put her squarely with the left-center wing of the current Court. Karl writes, “They will call her an ‘activist’ judge intent on making law from the bench, not interpreting law.” Their predictions are reflected in a number of public columns and commentaries (see May 26, 2009, May 26, 2009, May 26, 2009, May 26, 2009, May 28, 2009, May 28, 2009, May 29, 2009, May 29, 2009, and June 3, 2009). Intolerant of Positions Contrary to Her Own - The third wave of attack will claim, Goldstein writes, that she is intolerant of positions with which she disagrees. Proponents of this line of attack will focus on a decision she wrote that upheld affirmative action laws to the detriment of white firefighters, on a panel appearance in which she acknowledged that appellate judges sometimes make public policy, and a speech where she talked about the role her gender and ethnicity played in her decision-making. They will also focus, Karl notes, on a 2002 speech where she said the sex and ethnic origin of a judge can affect their decisions. Sotomayor said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life” (see October 26, 2001). “These reeds are too thin for that characterization to take hold,” Goldstein writes. The public “is easily able to accept a judge’s recognition of the lawmaking effects of her decisions and the influences of her background. There just isn’t any remotely persuasive evidence that Judge Sotomayor acts lawlessly or anything of the sort.” Goldstein’s predictions are reflected in a number of public columns and commentaries (see May 26, 2009, May 26, 2009, May 29, 2009, and June 3, 2009). [ABC News, 5/26/2009; Tom Goldstein, 5/26/2009]Personality Characteristics - The fourth wave of attacks will characterize her as, Goldstein writes, “gruff and impersonable,” based on some excerpts from oral arguments and a few anonymous criticisms voiced in the “Almanac of the Federal Judiciary.” Sotomayor can easily quash these attacks with a few well-turned statements in the public eye. From his own experiences arguing cases before the Court, Goldstein believes Sotomayor is similar in demeanor and temperment to Justices Roberts, Souter, and Antonin Scalia. Goldstein’s predictions are reflected in a number of public columns and commentaries (see May 27, 2009. May 29, 2009, and June 3, 2009). Missed Line of Attack - Neither Goldstein nor Karl write about the direct attacks on Sotomayor’s race and gender that some conservatives will launch (see May 26, 2009, May 26, 2009, May 27, 2009, May 28, 2009, May 28, 2009, May 28, 2009. May 29, 2009, June 2, 2009, June 3, 2009, and June 5, 2009). Goldstein’s own analysis of Sotomayor’s rulings will thoroughly disprove the allegations of racial bias (see May 29, 2009). Conclusion - Goldstein concludes, “All in all… her easy confirmation seems assured.” [Tom Goldstein, 5/26/2009]

Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) attacks Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) for what he calls “personal bias based on ethnicity and gender.” Smith says, “Judge Sotomayor will need to reassure the country that she will set aside her biases, uphold the rule of law, and interpret the Constitution as written, not as she believes it should have been written.” Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who will vote to confirm or deny Sotomayor’s nomination as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says Sotomayor has shown disrespect for the law in her time on the bench. Eleven years ago, Sessions voted against allowing her to become an appeals court judge. Sotomayor was confirmed despite Sessions’s vote. Now, Sessions says she will get a “fair and respectful hearing” before the committee, but says he and other conservatives worry about her “history of activism.” Legal analysts say Sotomayor has a history of complying with the law, and far from being a judicial activist, has usually shown judicial restraint and a deference to existing case law and judicial precedent. [Fox News, 5/26/2009] In a statement, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) questions “her ability to rule fairly without undue influence from her own personal race, gender, or political preferences.” [Senator James Inhofe, 5/26/2009] Liberal columnist Dana Goldstein retorts that the same question could be asked of the seven white males already on the bench, and asks sardonically, “White men are raceless and genderless, haven’t you heard?” [American Prospect, 5/26/2009]

Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and ABC News correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg misrepresent a remark by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see October 26, 2001 and May 26, 2009) that Kelly tells viewers said “Latina judges are obviously better than white male judges.” Kelly calls Sotomayor’s remarks “reverse racism,” and adds it is “[l]ike she’s saying that Latina judges are obviously better than white male judges.” Kelly goes on to claim, “I’ve looked at the entire speech that she was offering to see if that was taken out of context, and I have to tell you… it wasn’t” (see October 13, 2009). On ABC’s Good Morning America, Greenburg claims that Sotomayor “suggest[ed] that a wise Latino may actually be a better judge than a white man, and that white men have had some attitude adjustments and reached moments of great enlightenment, but there’s a long way to go.” [Media Matters, 5/26/2009]

Tom Tancredo (R-CA), a former House member and 2008 presidential candidate known for his radical isolationism and anti-immigrant views (see September 9, 2006), tells MSNBC host Ed Schultz that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) is a racist. Tancredo uses a statement from 2001 that seems to suggest Sotomayor believes Latinas (Hispanic women) make better rulings than white males (see October 26, 2001) to launch his attack. “I’m telling you she appears to be a racist,” Tancredo says. “She said things that are racist in any other context. That’s exactly how we would portray it and there’s no one who would get on the Supreme Court saying a thing like that except for a Hispanic woman and you’re going to say it doesn’t matter. Well, man. Where are you coming from? How can you possibly say that? There’s plenty of stuff.” Another guest, liberal columnist Bill Press, says that Sotomayor will get no “special protection” because of her race and gender, to which Tancredo scoffs, “Oh, jeez.” Responding to Press’s reiteration of Sotomayor’s extensive judicial background, Tancredo says: “You can still be a racist and have all of those things in your background. You can be a racist and have all of that stuff in your background. One does not preclude the other.” Schultz asks his third guest, reporter Mike Allen, if he would “check out to see if she had some racist comments?” Allen responds, “No,” to which Tancredo says: “You won’t do it? You won’t check it out? There you go.… They won’t even check it out.” Tancredo also calls Sotomayor a “radical” and in the same sentence admits he knows nothing of her judicial record. Allen says of Tancredo’s remarks, “Ed, we’re getting a preview here of a lot of phony outrage, theatrics, posturing.” [MSNBC, 5/26/2009]

The conservative National Review lambasts Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) for being a “liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important that the law as written.” The Review’s Wendy Long writes: “She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one’s sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench (see October 26, 2001). She reads racial preferences and quotas into the Constitution, even to the point of dishonoring those who preserve our public safety. On September 11, America saw firsthand the vital role of America’s firefighters in protecting our citizens. They put their lives on the line for her and the other citizens of New York and the nation. But Judge Sotomayor would sacrifice their claims to fair treatment in employment promotions to racial preferences and quotas. The Supreme Court is now reviewing that decision. She has an extremely high rate of her decisions being reversed, indicating that she is far more of a liberal activist than even the current liberal activist Supreme Court.” [National Review, 5/26/2009]

Echoing and repeating his calls for President Obama to “fail” (see January 16, 2009), conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, in a diatribe against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009), says he wants her to fail as well. “Do I want her to fail? Yeah,” he says. “Do I want her to fail to get on the court? Yes! She’d be a disaster on the court. Do I still want Obama to fail as president? Yeah. AP [Associated Press], you getting this? He’s going to fail anyway, but the sooner the better.” [Think Progress, 5/26/2009]

Former Bush White House political director Karl Rove attacks Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) on the grounds that she is less than intelligent. During a debate with former Clinton political director James Carville, moderator Charlie Rose notes, “She is very smart.” Rove responds, “Not necessarily.” Rose notes that Sotomayor “went to Princeton where she graduat[ed] with honors and then went on to Yale Law School,” to which Rove replies, “I know lots of stupid people who went to Ivy League schools.” Rose points out that Rove himself never graduated from college, and Rove says, “Message to the kids out there—don’t do what I did—I am the last of a generation.” [Huffington Post, 5/26/2009] In an appearance on Fox News, Rove continues denigrating Sotomayor’s intellect, saying that according to former colleagues, she was more like a “schoolmarm” than an intellectual force. Rove says: “What she would do is she would mark them up [legal opinions] like she was your English school teacher and—with your typos and misspellings and other words that she wanted to have changed and send it back to her colleagues. Not exactly the best way to ingratiate yourself with your colleagues. Rather than say, ‘Oh, I thought you had an interesting legal argument here and I’d like to talk to you more about this here,’ she was acting like sort of a schoolmarm.” [Think Progress, 5/27/2009]

Conservative activist Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, attacks Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) as an “intellectual lightweight,” and compares her to the Bush administration’s failed nomination of White House lawyer Harriet Miers for the Court (see October 3-27, 2005). “I would point you to the Harriet Miers nomination under the second President Bush,” he tells radio listeners on WTOP. “She was also, many people felt, an intellectual lightweight, picked because she was a woman, people felt. And even though Republicans controlled the Senate, she ultimately had to withdraw. And that could happen here. This is someone who clearly was picked because she’s a woman and Hispanic, not because she was the best qualified. I could certainly see red and purple state Democrats gawking at it and she may very well have to withdraw her nomination.” [Think Progress, 5/26/2009] At the Washington Post and National Review, conservative columnist Ramesh Ponnaru attacks Sotomayor as “Obama’s Harriet Miers.” He continues to slam the nominee for asserting that judges sometimes make policy, claims—without naming names—that some Democrats believe she lacks “the intellect to be on the high court,” falsely claims that President Obama chose her because she passed “a pro-abortion litmus test,” criticizes her for having “empathy, at least for some groups” (a veiled reference to her Hispanic heritage and her gender), and claims that she has a “high reversal rate” before the Court. He calls her “the crassest of political picks.” [National Review, 5/26/2009; Washington Post, 5/26/2009]

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) says that because Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) is what he calls a “Latina woman racist,” she should immediately withdraw her nomination. Gingrich bases his remark on a 2001 comment by Sotomayor in which she said she “hopes that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life” (see October 26, 2001). Sending a text message on Twitter, Gingrich writes: “Imagine a judicial nominee said, ‘My experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman.’ New racism is no better than old racism.” He follows with another message: “White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.” Republican National Committee (RNC) media chairman Todd Herman quickly “retweets” Gingrich’s message, which usually signifies agreement with the message, but the RNC will refuse to say whether or not it officially endorses Gingrich’s comment. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs replies that Gingrich is probably not the best source of information or guidance on the issue, and warns against excessive rhetoric: “I think it is probably important for any involved in this debate to be exceedingly careful with the way in which they’ve decided to describe different aspects of the impending confirmation. I think we’re satisfied that when the people of America and the people of the Senate get a chance to look at more than just the blog of a former lawmaker that they’ll come to the same conclusion that the president did.” [Think Progress, 5/27/2009; Plum Line, 5/27/2009; Washington Times, 5/28/2009] Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, refuses to align himself with Gingrich’s characterization. Asked about Gingrich’s remark, Hatch says, “No, I don’t agree with that.” [Think Progress, 5/27/2009] Days later, Gingrich will appear to withdraw the “racist” characterization, although he will go on to accuse Sotomayor of “betray[ing]” the “American system” of law (see June 3, 2009).

Fox News pundit Sean Hannity attacks the character of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009), using carefully selected quotes from former colleagues who remain anonymous. Hannity tells his listeners: “[W]hat do the lawyers who have appeared in her courtroom think of her judicial temperament? Well, not much. The Almanac of the Federal Judiciary solicits commentary from practicing attorneys about our federal judges. Now here’s what some lawyers who have argued before Judge Sotomayor had to say about her. Quote, ‘She is a terror on the bench. She is overly aggressive, not very judicial. She behaves in an out-of-control manner. She is nasty to lawyers.’” Hannity does not tell his listeners of some of the other comments about Sotomayor in the Almanac: “very smart,” “very intelligent,” “stern,” “an exceptional judge overall,” and “has a very good commonsense approach to the law.” One commentator wrote: “She can be tough as nails, but, in truth, I think some lawyers give her a hard time or are threatened by her. She’s very accomplished and clearly smart, and, in truth, I think they’re intimidated. She has always been decent enough to me.” Another wrote: “She’s very smart and well prepared, and she expects lawyers to rise to her level. She has very little tolerance for lawyers who can’t match her intellectually.” [Think Progress, 5/28/2009]

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